Initial jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 24,000 last week to 399,000 as more workers lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday. At the same time, the economy continues to lose workers.

In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million people have dropped out of the labor force — they aren’t working, and they aren’t looking — according to data from Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the past two months, the labor force shrank by 170,000.

This is virtually unprecedented in past economic recoveries, at least since the BLS has kept detailed records. In the past nine recoveries, the labor force had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point, according to an IBD analysis of the BLS data.

…According to the BLS, the “labor force participation rate” — the ratio of the number of people either working or looking for work compared with the entire working-age population — is now 64%, down from 65.7% when the recession ended in June 2009. That’s the lowest level since women began entering the workforce in far greater numbers several decades ago.

If you adjust for this drop, the unemployment rate would be close to 11%, instead of the official 8.5%.

At this rate, the completely politicized Bureau of Labor Statistics should just remove several million more workers from the labor force, so they can get the unemployment rate down to, say, 4.8%. Like it was during those nightmarish Bush years.

 
Related: Obama Labor Politburo Now Publishing Patently Bogus Unemployment Propaganda.

There’s no guarantee the being a black father will stop this because they’re killing black fathers too. One of the tragedies of this [garbled] is that you don’t have to be guilty to be crucified – killing the innocent. Therefore we must overwhelm them with numbers. That becomes our strength to fight back.

When I was younger I would say I wanted my children to get educated so that they wouldn’t have to go through what I’ve gone through. I’ve changed that position now. I want them to get a good education so they can have more tools with which to fight. The fight will not stop. I want them to have more tools. I want black fathers to have more tools with which to fight.

So when it’s time for Operation Black Vote to have massive registration, responsible black fathers vote to make a difference. They demonstrate. They march. They fight back.

So I say ‘fathers, teach your children how to fight for jobs and justice and healthcare using the weapons of your mind, your vote, and your marching feet.’

It will be a good day when professional race-baiters like Jackson and Sharpton are finally given all the respect they deserve. Which is to say, none.

 
 
Related: The Democrats’ Laughable “War on Poverty”

A top union and a top liberal blog announced Tuesday that they’ll team up to sponsor polling through the 2012 elections. Daily Kos and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said they will join forces to conduct issue and campaign polling in key states and races over the next two years…

…The SEIU/Daily Kos poll will use Public Policy Polling (PPP), a Democratic firm that uses automated polling rather than live, over-the-phone survey methods. Moulitsas contracted with PPP in June of 2010 after severing ties with Research 2000, which faced allegations of producing faulty poll results.

So when you read news like this, take it with a grain of salt.

Oh my: Ron Paul within one point of Gingrich in Iowa? … “There has been some major movement in the Republican Presidential race in Iowa over the last week, with what was a 9 point lead for Newt Gingrich now all the way down to a single point. Gingrich is at 22% to 21% for Paul with Mitt Romney at 16%, Michele Bachmann at 11%, Rick Perry at 9%, Rick Santorum at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 5%, and Gary Johnson at 1%.”

Really? Methinks that the PPP poll is patently bogus. The Intrade prediction market, probably the best indicator of reality, has Gingrich trading at a 47% chance of winning Iowa versus 29% for Paul.

And let’s not forget who Ron Paul really is:

• A man who claims that bloodthirsty Islamist terrorists are morally equivalent to Americans?

• A man who vocally encourages the despicable 9/11 Truther movement?

• A man who embraces virulent anti-semites and is inspired by those who despise Jews?

• A man whose foreign policy prescriptions are so “far left” that they are outright dangerous?

• A man whose strongest supporters vilify Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Ed Meese, Sarah Palin, etc.?

• A man who despises Israel, a beacon of freedom in an otherwise barbaric Middle East?

• A man so power-hungry that he refuses to rule out a third-party run, which would very likely help reelect Barack Obama?

Jeffrey Lord offers the quintessential summary of Ron Paul for conservatives:

The Ron Paul campaign is really about re-educating America to what can only be called Neoliberalism. Which, based on the evidence and writings of its supporters, appears to be a thin gruel of free markets and non-interventionism seasoned heavily with anti-Semitism, morally obtuse Neo-Confederates, and an outspoken contempt for both conservatism and conservative leaders past and present.

I don’t care how well-organized the Paulbots are in Iowa. I put as much stock in PPP polling as I do in lunar cheese. No thinking Republican would ever cast a vote for a man who advocates a George McGovern foreign policy. Ever.

A Soviet prospecting mission began here in the fifties. In 1971, a drilling operation exposed an underground cavity that discharged enormous quantities of gas. Thinking the supply of gas would last but a few weeks, Soviet engineers decided to torch the hole. And it’s been burning ever since. The intense heat coming from the crater allows visitors to approach Hell’s Door only for a few minutes at a time because of the unbearable temperature.

At night, the hole looks like Dante’s Inferno: the fire burns in all its magnificence, giving the well the look of a volcanic burning crater.

But you and I have to give up our incandescent light-bulbs.

For the children. Oh, and the global warming scam, too. But mostly the children. And Ewoks.

It seems esteemed NASA astronomer turned climatologist turned paid activist Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has not been reporting some income that he is required by law to do. How long will NASA continue to look the other way? Chris Horner explains.

A Summary of James E. Hansen’s NASA Ethics File

NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.

…Hansen [also] failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties … to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.

Ethics laws require that such payments or gifts be reported on an SF278 public financial disclosure form. As detailed, below, Hansen nonetheless regularly refused to report this income.

Also, he seems to have inappropriately taken between $10,000 and $26,000 for speeches unlawfully promoting him as a NASA employee. This is despite NASA ordering him to return at least some of the money, with the rest apparently unnoticed by NASA. This raises troubling issues about Hansen’s, and NASA’s, compliance with ethics rules, the general prohibition on not privately benefitting from public service, and even the criminal code prohibition on not having one’s public employment income supplemented. All of this lucrative activity followed Hansen ratcheting up his global warming alarmism and activism to be more political… [but] he cannot receive outside income for doing his job, he has placed himself in peril, assuming the Department of Justice can find a way to be interested in these revelations.

…Hansen suddenly became the recipient of many, often lucrative offers of outside employment and awards after he escalated his political activism — using his NASA position as a platform, and springboard. This began with a strident “60 Minutes” interview in early 2006, alleging political interference by the Bush administration in climate science…

…consider these failures to report often elegant air and hotel/resort accommodations received on his SF278 as required by law (the amount of direct cash income received from the party providing him travel, as well, is in parentheses):

• Blue Planet Prize ($500,000), travel for Hansen and his wife to Tokyo, Japan, 2010
• Dan David Prize ($500,000), travel to Paris, 2007
• Sophie Prize ($100,000), Oslo Norway, travel for Hansen and his wife, 2010
• WWF Duke of Edinburgh Award, Travel for Hansen and his wife, London, 2006
• Alpbach, Austria (alpine resort)(“business class”, with wife), 2007
• Shell Oil UK ($10,000), London, 2009
• FORO Cluster de Energia, travel for Hansen and wife (“business class”), Bilbao, Spain, 2008
• ACT Coalition, travel for Hansen and wife to London, 2007
• Progressive Forum ($10,000)(“first class”), to Houston, 2006
• Progressive Forum ($10,000), to Houston, 2009
• UCSB ($10,000), to Santa Barbara, CA
• Nierenberg Prize ($25,000), to San Diego, 2008
• Nevada Medal ($20,000), to Las Vegas, Reno, 2008
• EarthWorks Expos, to Denver, 2006
• California Academy of Science ($1,500), to San Francisco, 2009
• CalTech ($2,000), travel to Pasadena, CA for Hansen and his wife, 2007

The following is an incomplete list of other travel apparently accepted to make paid speeches and/or receive cash awards but not reported on SF278 financial disclosures:

Boston, Washington, DC (twice); Columbus, OH; Omaha, NE; Wilmington, DE; Ithaca, NY (business class); Chapel Hill, NC; Deerfield, IL (Sierra Club “No Coal” campaign); Dartmouth, NH; Alberta, Canada (as consultant to a law firm helping run an anti-oil sands campaign), Stanford; Minneapolis; Missoula, MT

…World Wildlife Fund [also] gave Hansen an engraved Montres Rolex watch, which typically run $8,000 and up (2006), but which was not reported by Hansen on his SF 278 under “gifts”, which must be reported if valued at more than $260…

These activities appear to violate the criminal code, 18 U.S.C. 209.

And Hansen’s not the only one enriching himself. Members of the United Nations Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have profited greatly from their various reports advocating man-made global warming, carbon offsets and other money-making schemes.

CBS News explains how the Botox-laden, swamp-draining, small business-stiffing Pelosi made her millions:

The former speaker and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs, one of which was from Visa in 2008 – just as a troublesome piece of legislation that would have hurt credit card companies began making its way through the House. The Pelosis purchased 5,000 shares of Visa at the initial price of $44 dollars. Two days later it was trading at $64.

…this stock purchase was made as Visa was engaged in a full-court press to lobby Pelosi to stop legislation to curb credit-card swipe fees to vendors.

In 2007, Visa used an army of lobbyists to try to influence Pelosi, including one of her former advisers, Dean Aguillen… In addition to exploiting the revolving door between Congress and lobbying firms, Visa’s political action committee made a $1,000 donation to Pelosi’s re-election campaign… Two days after that donation was made, Pelosi met with Visa executives in her office. Aguillen also contributed $1,000 to Pelosi and another $1,000 to the campaign arm of the House Democratic caucusin the first half of 2008.

Dave Del Dotto could not be reached for comment at press time.

Related:

• Caller to Mark Levin Show Describes How Nancy Pelosi and her Husband Abuse Their Power to Stiff Small Business
• Gallery of Twitches: Stop-Action Photos of Nancy Pelosi as She Faces Blistering Questions

Hat tip: Ace.

Apparently, when the findings of the latest IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program are compared to earlier reports crafted by “moderate” Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei, the obvious conclusion is that ElBaradei was working for the Mullahs. ElBaradei has since moved on. He’s now one of the leading candidates vying to be Egypt’s president.

###

ynetnews.com, 11/9/11

Israeli officials: ElBaradei an Iranian agent

Senior state officials accuse former IAEA chairman of covering up for Islamic Republic during his term, allowing Iranians to move ahead with nuclear program while playing for time. ‘He is a despicable person,’ one of them says.

Senior Israeli officials said Tuesday night that the International Atomic Energy Agency report stating that Iran has been working on developing a nuclear weapon design proves that the former UN nuclear watchdog chairman “was an Iranian agent”.

The former IAEA chairman, Mohamed ElBaradei, is an Egyptian diplomat who even won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

For years he defended the Iranian nuclear program, claiming that it was peaceful, thus allowing the Iranians to continue their activity with the nuclear watchdog’s seal of approval.

According to one of the state officials, the new report published Tuesday proves “just how much he was working for the Iranians.

“He simply rescued Iran and was constantly busy covering up for them, causing serious damage by allowing the Iranians to fool the entire world and play for time. History may judge him as the person who helped Iran obtain a nuclear weapon.

“The things exposed now are not new. These are old things which were hidden and not published,” the official added. “Now it turns out that ElBaradei led an active policy of concealment and disregard. This is very serious. He is a despicable person.”

“ElBaradei didn’t just mess us up, he messed up the entire sane world,” added Uzi Eilam, former head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Agency. “He was dishonest his entire term. He is the one who stopped the Security Council from imposing serious sanctions, providing the Iranians with precious time.”

Gee, after the multi-billion dollar Oil-for-Food scandal; the IPCC Global Warming Bunko Scam; mass-murder in Darfur; the Rwandan genocide; accusations of rape and child pornography in the Congo, Haiti, Liberia, and Sudan; and ties to a North Korean counterfeiting operation, who could have suspected a corrupt U.N. was helping the Iranians acquire nukes?
 
 
Related: “The Atomic Mahdi.”

“If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” Cahill said in a press conference in his office.

…[T]he state’s health insurance law…Cahill said, “has nearly bankrupted the state.”

Cahill said the law is being sustained only with the help of federal aid, which he suggested that the Obama administration is funneling to Massachusetts to help the president make the case for a similar plan in Congress… “…I would argue that we’re being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through” Congress.

Commonwealth Connector, the independent state agency established to help residents find the health insurance, has “totally failed,” to create competition and connect people with affordable insurance, Cahill said, pointing out that 68 percent of the residents it serves receive subsidized care.

“We haven’t done anything about driving down costs,” Cahill said. “We haven’t helped small business. We haven’t changed the way we pay for health care and the way we deliver it.”…

Look, if Romney somehow wins the nomination, I’ll support him without question against Barack Obama.

But we need to elect a conservative in 2012 who is 100% committed to the eradication of Obamacare. For if it isn’t wiped from the books, I fear this country may not survive.

Related: Oh, Super: Romney Consulted With Obama Mass Sterilization Expert and Science Czar John Holdren

But if it’s true that Romney consulted with Obama’s crazed ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren, he should step out of the GOP race today.

Barack Hussein Obama has clotted the executive branch with unaccountable “czars” — unsavory characters too extreme to be confirmed for cabinet positions even by a hyper-partisan, Democrat-controlled Senate. Among the most alarming of these malevolent lunatics is Science Czar John Holdren, a participant in ClimateGate who has advocated de-developing America and putting sterilants in the public water supply…

…Holdren has also spoken in favor of forced abortions, confiscation of babies, targeted as well as mass involuntary sterilization, bureaucratic regulation of family size, and global authoritarian government. If there is a line between ultra-left ideologue and evil maniac, Holdren clearly crosses it. No one to the right of Pol Pot would want John Holdren advising our leaders.

This brings us onto still more common ground between Barack Obama and Willard “Mitt” Romney. From an official memo released by Willard’s office when he was Governor of Taxachusetts, announcing “Strict New Clean Air Regulations“ [i.e., Cap and Trade]…

…Sound familiar? Obama wanted to impose Cap & Trade nationwide, but it would so obviously cripple the economy that he couldn’t get it through a Democrat Senate that was radical enough to pass ObamaCare — the national version of RomneyCare.

Now to the even scarier part: In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts. These include John Holden [sic], professor of environmental policy at Harvard University…

Of course, that was back in 2005. By now everyone knows that global warming is a hoax, and CO2 is harmless. Everyone except Mittens, that is. He continues to proclaim that economic activity makes it be too hot out.

This comes on the heels of reports that President Obama met with Romney’s key advisers while designing Obamacare.

Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney’s landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romney’s own health care advisers and experts to help craft the act now derided by Republicans as “Obamacare.”

Romney’s shape-shifting positions are so flagrant that even Democrats are producing flip-flop videos of the sort that pulverized John Kerry in 2004.

Look, folks: I’ll support Mitt Romney against Barack Obama if he’s the nominee. But he’s not the nominee. Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are all vastly superior candidates — and vastly more electable in the general — than Mitt Romney.

We don’t need another John McCain or Bob Dole. We don’t need another mushy centrist with ill-defined principles. Too much is at stake this year. While there may not be a Reagan in the race, there are Constitutional conservatives to choose from. And choose from them we must if this Republic is to survive.
 
 
Related: Early glimpse at the official 2012 Obama bumper-sticker (if they accept my design proposal).
 

The EPA will shut down an estimated 20% of the nation’s coal plants through the ground-level ozone rule (the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) ) through cap and trade that is about to be implemented in January 2012. Opponents of the Obama administration’s “over-reaching” EPA say these are costly regulations. Financial analysts estimate that the cost of this rule will be $130 billion by 2015. But if that figure is correct, that’s good news for the US economy.

…Because there is another way of looking at that $130 billion “expense”. One industry’s expense is another industry’s sales bonanza. For the coal industry’s balance sheet, it is an expense, but think about who is going to perform this $130 billion cleanup – fairies? Hardly. This is a job for real American industries…

Consider the raw idiocy behind this line of “reasoning”:

• America’s coal industry employs 126,000 workers directly and another 455,000 workers whose jobs are indirectly dependent upon the coal industry.

• Closing 20% of America’s coal factories will result in the immediate layoffs of about 116,000 workers, many of them union members in the mining, electrical, transportation and service industries.

• Blackouts and brownouts will become commonplace: there is no way to shutter roughly 10% of America’s electric generation capacity without causing shortages and rationing.

• And simple supply-and-demand will cause skyrocketing prices for electricity, which will be paid for directly by retail customers (you and I) as well as businesses, which will also pass those costs on to consumers like — yes — you and I.

The executive summary for you hard-working, dues-paying members of the AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Teamsters and the United Mine Workers: the Democrat Party is now aligned with the hard-left Eco-Marxist movement and it is using your money to destroy your jobs.

Remember in 2012.

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

They told us that taking trillions of dollars and giving it to those “who truly needed it” would cure poverty.

They told us that giving home loans to those who couldn’t afford them would make the American dream achievable for all.

They told us that paying into the Social Security “Trust Fund” would guarantee a comfortable retirement for everyone.

They told us that allowing teachers to unionize in public schools would help inner city students reach for the stars.

They told us that the federal government could run a guaranteed, affordable health care program for seniors forever.

They told us that the new employment paradigm consisted of millions of “green jobs”.

They told us that their support for immoral and criminal behavior wouldn’t result in the breakdown of the two-parent family.

They told us that spending trillions on Stimulus programs would heal a damaged economy.

They told us that raising taxes on corporations and “the rich” would create more jobs.

They told us that our borders were “as secure as they’ve ever been”.

They told us that intentionally restricting access to our own sources of energy would reduce dependence on foreign oil.

They told us that spreading unemployment benefits and food stamps far and wide would help the economy.

They told us that, despite other failed government health care programs, they could successfully take over the entire medical system.

They told us that their record-breaking borrowing could never result in a downgrade of the United States’ AAA credit rating.

They told us that “the Constitution doesn’t matter”.

They told us that anyone who opposes their unconstitutional, un-American, reckless and failed policies are racists.

Well, I’m here to tell you:

Everything they told us was a lie.

Everything they told us was wrong.

Intentionally, diabolically, criminally wrong.

And if we don’t vote out every Democrat politician — at every level of government — in 2012, this beautiful Republic, this magnificent country, this bastion of free enterprise and private property rights, this shining city on a hill… well, it will be finished.

Related: Don’t cry for me, America.

Congressional investigators tell CBS News there’s evidence the U.S. Attorney’s office in Arizona sought to cover up a link between their controversial gunwalking operation known as “Fast and Furious” and the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Terry was murdered in Arizona near the US border last December. Two assault rifles ATF had allegedly allowed onto the street without interdiction were found at the scene…

…the lead prosecutor on Fast and Furious, Assistant US Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry’s murder. “(I)n the hours after Agent Terry’s death,” says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently “contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed.” The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division…

…An internal ATF email dated the day after Terry’s death reveals the quick decision to not disclose the source of the weapons found at the murder scene: “… this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

Another ATF email indicates that the justification both offices used to not charge the suspect with crimes related to the murder scene “was to not ‘complicate’ the FBI’s investigation.”

ATF whistleblowers revealed the link between the two cases to Congressional investigators and CBS News, saying their supervisors were attempting to cover it up.

To their credit, Reps. Grassley and Issa have announced they are expanding the Gunrunner investigation. Particularly galling:

…a court filing by the Phoenix office seeking to deny Mr. Terry’s family rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, and expressed concerns about conflicts of interest in prosecuting the Terry case. “Since your office directed and approved the daily tactical decisions in Operation Fast and Furious, it is hard to avoid the perception that a conflict of interest exists,” the two wrote.

What did Eric Holder know — and when did he know it?

And just how high does the coverup go?

Related:
08/28/11: Heard about the New Mexico city officials smuggling guns to drug cartels in U.S. police cars?
07/17/11: ATF facilitated sales of guns to cartel members, who were actually FBI informants using taxpayer money
07/12/11: More proof that Holder lied and people died

Consider the recent actions of the EPA and its related bureaucracies, who ostensibly act with the consent of the American people to protect the environment:

• Southern Co., parent of Alabama Power, critical of EPA emission rule: “Southern Co. would have to spend billions retrofitting, upgrading or closing its coal-fired power plants under tough new emissions standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, and Alabama’s utility regulator is backing the industry’s complaints that the changes would increase power bills and threaten reliability… The Atlanta-based utility giant, in a strongly worded, 200-page submission to the EPA, says the long-term price tag of several new environmental proposals is at least $13 billion.”

• Coal Regs Would Kill Jobs, Boost Energy Bills: “Two new EPA pollution regulations will slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and electric rates will skyrocket 11 percent to over 23 percent, according to a new study based on government data… Overall, the rules aimed at making the air cleaner could cost the coal-fired power plant industry $180 billion…”

• To EPA, milk is ‘ toxic sludge’: “Imagine treating milk the same as the toxic sludge now washing up on Gulf Coast beaches… It may sound absurd, but some dairy producers are worried that it could happen under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations intended to prevent oil spills from polluting waterways.”

• CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA: “The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.”

• Energy in America: EPA Rules Force Shell to Abandon Oil Drilling Plans: “Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits… Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion.”

• White House, EPA ignore Small Business Admin’s report that new coal regulations will kill jobs, economy: “President Barack Obama is ignoring heated concerns from within his own administration that new Environmental Protection Agency coal industry regulations will be economically devastating… The EPA is plowing forward with new Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) mandates. The regulations would force coal energy plants to install giant scrubber-like materials inside smokestacks to capture and cleanse carbon particles before their atmospheric release.”

• Administration blocks more Bush-era oil shale development leases: “The Interior Department on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration plan to open parts of the Mountain West for oil shale development, announcing that it would first study the water, power and land-use issues that complicate one of the nation’s most abundant but controversial untapped sources of energy.”

• Obama administration reverses Bush wilderness policy: “U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced on Thursday that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will again have the authority to set aside large areas of federally owned territory in the West that it deems deserving of wilderness protection.”

• Plans for massive oil pipeline opposed by environmentalists: “More than 1,000 activists — including NASA climatologist James Hansen, who has urged the scientific community to “get involved in this fray” — are expected to descend on the White House starting Sunday for three weeks of civil disobedience and mass arrests. Six California activists are driving from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., as part of a “No Tar Sands Caravan” that leaves Sunday… The American Petroleum Institute and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, both of which are urging the State Department to approve the project, held a conference call with journalists Thursday in which they claimed the pipeline could generate 20,000 new jobs.”

• Energy Secretary Chu Embraces High Gas Prices, Again: “This weekend, Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared on Fox News Sunday and host Chris Wallace asked him about his desire in 2008 for Americans to punitively pay more at the pump in order to wean them off of gasoline. Shockingly, Chu did not walk back his comments as he has attempted to do in the past. In fact, he embraced the strategy noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles.”

• Obama’s New Fuel Economy Standards Will Increase Cost of a Car More Than $11,000: “The Obama Administration’s new fuel economy standards will cause the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase over $11,000, according to a study conducted by the Center for Automotive Research.”

Everything this administration does is intended to make Americans suffer. Every single thing.

If we don’t crush the Democrats at the voting booth in 2012, I fear that the great American experiment will be finished.

The timing of the movie’s release is indeed “curious.”

 
Related: The 8 Most Terrifying Holes on Earth.

One of the challenges in terms of rebuilding our economy is – businesses have gotten so efficient, that, uh, when was the last time somebody went to a bank teller? Instead of using an ATM. Or, used a travel agent instead of going online. A lot of jobs out that that used to require people now have become automated.

Apparently you have to be an economic illiterate to be a Democrat.

Since the dawn of recorded history, scientific and industrial advances have raised the average standard of living, not lowered it.

• In 1712, the invention of the steam engine touched off the Industrial Revolution, providing an inexpensive mechanical power source to replace manual and animal labor.

• In 1733, the invention of the flying shuttle allowed a weaver to produce a wider band of cloth. This facilitated faster production of textiles for fabric, clothing and other uses.

• In 1769, James Watt added a crank and flywheel to other steam engine improvements, providing efficient rotary motion for a wide variety of industrial uses.

• In the early nineteenth century, the invention of the power loom — a steam-powered, mechanical cloth-making machine — allowed women to replace men in many textile manufacturing facilities.

• In 1830, the invention of the sewing machine facilitated the “ready-made clothing” industry.

All of these advances created brand new industries and began to free mankind from routine, manual labor. The sewing machine, for example, required hundreds of parts. These parts, made of many different materials, had to be manufactured and machined, often by dozens of suppliers. New companies arose to source these parts, new industries — like repair services — were created, and massive economic value was achieved through the creation of end products.

Such is also the case — multiplied by orders of magnitude — with ATMs and the Internet.

It’s truly a shame and an outrage that we have leaders in Washington who no more understand general economic principles than they do quantum physics.

Fortunately, the American people know what’s going on: a new low of only 26% approve of Obama’s handling of the economy.

 
Related: “The Progressive and the Pencil“.

 
Image hat tips: The Corliss Engine.

No s***. He really said that.

Well, obviously, it’s putting people to work. Which is why we’re going to have some interesting things in the course of the forum this morning. Later this morning, we’re going have a press conference with Secretary Mavis and Secretary Chu to announce something that’s never happened in this country — something that we think is exciting in terms of job growth…

…I should point out, when you talk about the SNAP program or the food stamp program, you have to recognize that it’s also an economic stimulus. Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity. If people are able to buy a little more in the grocery store, someone has to stock it, package it, shelve it, process it, ship it. All of those are jobs. It’s the most direct stimulus you can get in the economy during these tough times.

Bask in the sheer genius of Tom Vilsack, peons: the government taking money from you hard-working Americans — and giving it to others, without regard for their ability to work — stimulates the economy!

Why didn’t we think of this before?

In fact, let’s put everyone in America on food-stamps! That’ll be the ultimate Stimulus!

Ultimate, I say!

As an aside, my fellow Tea Party terrorists, Vilsack’s wife is running against Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a true fiscal conservative.

Do we need another economic illiterate in Congress? I think not. Therefore I urge you to give $5, $10, whatever you can spare to Steve King’s campaign.

We need exactly zero Vilsacks in office in 2012.

 
Related Fun: So the Democrats Finally Want Fiscal Responsibility? Great. Let’s End Their Disastrous “War on Poverty”

…next time Obama or his allies in the press go back to the well and recite the well-worn verse that spending is all the other guy’s fault, take a look at the facts…

President Obama has steered a fiscal course that will lead to more spending and deeper deficits and ultimately to vastly higher taxes…

…If you want to know the real cause of our deficits today, the answer lies primarily with Obama. If you want to know the real cause of our deficits in the near future, the answer lies in entitlement spending, which Obamacare increases.

That John Boehner, who was put into power by the same Tea Party conservatives he condemns, could ignore the so-called “emergency Stimulus” package — and leave it in all subsequent baseline budgets — is a freaking moral outrage!

Fight! Why won’t they fight? Because: (a) they’re cowards; or (b) they like big government. Either answer is un-freaking-acceptable. Has Barack Obama given an inch in his battle to Cloward-Piven-ize America? No! Did Stretch Pelosi? No! Did Harry “Chuck Schumer writes my speeches” Reid? Hell, no!

Boehner had two nuclear weapons at his disposal. And he chose to use neither. He had the debt ceiling and a threat of a downgrade by the rating agencies.

Cut, Cap & Balance addressed both issues.

If Republicans had united behind CCB, they could have forced a vote in the Senate — by putting massive pressure on the 20 Democrats who had earlier pledged to support a Balanced Budget Amendment — and send it to the President’s desk.

Boehner could then tell the American people: there’s only one plan that addresses the deficit and prevents a downgrade.

And let Obama deal with the fallout of a veto — if he has the guts.

Instead, we submit a plan that still results in downgrade and default.

Idiocy. Sheer, unmitigated idiocy.

We need to elect a boatload more conservatives in 2012, politically eradicate the RINOs, and jam true conservatives into leadership positions.

Because all of these pantywaists — put together — don’t have the cojones of Michele Bachmann.

They’re wimps who are selling out the American people — just a tad bit slower than the Marxist, Democrat Left. We’re headed for fiscal apocalypse and these feckless RINOs won’t even put up a fight.

 

 
Related: The question for the House Republican leadership: will you do what is politically expedient — or will you do what is right?

Delivered on March 1, 1920 at the First All-Russia Congress of Workers, Vladimir Lenin concluded his keynote speech with the following promise.

We have now concentrated all our forces on the restoration of industry and are steadfastly waging this new war, in which we shall be as victorious as we have been hitherto. We have instructed a commission of scientists and engineers to draw up a plan for the electrification of Russia. The plan will be ready in two months and will enable us to got a full and clear picture of how, in a few years, the whole of Russia will be covered by a network of electric transmission lines, will be restored in a new way, not the old way, and how she will achieve that culture which [we] saw in Germany.

That is the way we must restore our industry, and that is the way we shall return a hundredfold the loan of grain we are taking from the peasants. We know that this cannot be done in a year or two; the minimum programme of electrification is calculated for a period of not less than three years, and the complete success of this advanced industry will require not less than ten years … We have gained that experience in leading the masses with the help of urban workers which will carry us through all difficulties on this bloodless front of struggle against economic chaos and will lead to greater victories than those we gained in the war against international imperialism. (Applause.)

71 years later, when the Soviet Union collapsed, huge swaths of the country had no electric power.

In a speech delivered on January 8, 2009, President-Elect Barack Obama urged Congress to pass a Stimulus bill warning that the recession could become “dramatically worse” and last for years otherwise.

That is why we need to act boldly and act now to reverse these cycles. That’s why we need to put money in the pockets of the American people, create new jobs, and invest in our future…

That work begins with this plan – a plan I am confident will save or create at least three million jobs over the next few years… That’s why we’ll invest in priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century. That’s why the overwhelming majority of the jobs created will be in the private sector, while our plan will save the public sector jobs…

To finally spark the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years. We will modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills. In the process, we will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced – jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.

To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized

This is the hallmark of the Statist.

Ideologically unable to unleash the private sector, the Statist must always paint a picture of a Utopian future hovering just a few years away. If only you can give him more more money and more authority, this Utopia can be yours!

And, of course, it always fails to materialize.

We must deconstruct the Statists’ policy failures. Look not at the mirage-like vision of the future that he paints; look instead at what he’s done.

 

 
Related: Four Brutal Graphs From the Age of Obama.

 

 
Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Mr. Edison, describe for the committee the nature of your “light bulb” invention.

Distinguished representatives and guests, while the idea of electric lighting is not a new one, neither had it been a practical matter until we produced our new incandescent light bulb.

It uses a lower current of electricity and is both safe and economical.

So this electric light bulb that your firm invented: do you agree that demand for affordable lighting will skyrocket and that more and more electricity will need to be produced? Have you considered the impact on carbon emissions into the atmosphere — the inevitable result of lighting all of these “bulbs”?

No, sir. We were simply trying to create a useful product for consumers, one that enhances safety and society as a whole.

Have you considered alternative lighting mechanisms that would consume less electricity? How many “green collar” scientists are working in your laboratories? Have you considered the impact of your invention on climate change?

No, sir — I’ll admit we were simply trying to create a functional light bulb.

And this phonograph you’ve invented, Mr. Edison, have you evaluated how its production could skyrocket due to high demand for musical recordings? Have you produced an assessment for the EPA and state regulators as to its impact on the environment? Production of tin, vinyl and other substances could explode!

Ah, never mind.

The committee calls Henry Ford.

Here.

Please explain this “invention” of yours: this “mass-produced” automobile.

Ladies and gentlemen, one day it struck me. We could produce cheaper goods, without compromising quality, by standardizing designs and assembly processes. We created an “assembly line” that helps us mass-produce vehicles…

These “cars” of yours are reproducing like locusts! Virtually everyone is driving them! And where do you think you’ll get the fuel, the gas for these –

Distinguished Representative, America’s natural resources are plentiful and there is no shortage of oil. Furthermore, our new processes are a significant improvement because automobiles can be produced more efficiently and consistently.

Mr. Ford. Mr. Edison. The conclusions of this committee are clear. The U.S. government cannot tolerate out-of-control corporate entities run by super-wealthy individuals such as yourselves. We must confiscate your factories and laboratories until they can be unionized; vetted by federal, state and local regulators; and certified as “green”.

In short, we must call a halt to your outrageous activities. You and Mr. Edison are dismissed.
 
 

Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

Two of the three judges asserted that Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to compel individuals’ behavior by dint of their mere existence. A requirement that citizens purchase a product — in this case, health care insurance — whether they wish to or not, has never before occurred in all of American history.

Virtually everyone will need health care services at some point, including, in the aggregate, those without health insurance. Even dramatic attempts to protect one’s health and minimize the need for health care will not always be successful, and the health care market is characterized by unpredictable and unavoidable needs for care.

It is under this rubric that the Court shreds the United States Constitution, eviscerates the Declaration of Independence and completely ignores the stated intent of the Framers in The Federalist Papers.

Because, the Judges assert, that most people will participate in the health care market, the federal government has the right to compel — with the force of law — individuals to purchase health insurance contracts of the central government’s design.

How is the health care industry segregated from other industries to prevent the federal government from encroaching upon every other segment of human activity? The judges spare but a few words on this critical issue, stating “…unlike nearly all other industries, the health care market is governed by federal and state laws requiring institutions to provide services regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.”

In other words, the only “firewall” the judges construct to shield other industries from the Orwellian reach of the government is one made of cardboard. In essence, because the health care market is already regulated, the industry is said to be unique and therefore can be utterly controlled by the central government.

Consider:

All citizens will need shelter and many regulations already dictate the nature and construction of housing. Can the central government compel individuals to purchase certain minimum levels of housing and builders to offer certain services under a regime of price controls? Apparently so.

All citizens will need food and a battery of regulations at every level of government already dictate every aspect of food manufacture and distribution. Can the central government require individuals to buy certain foods — perhaps under the aegis of healthy eating — and businesses to offer a menu dictated by a central authority? Apparently so.

All citizens will require transportation and a host of regulations govern every modality of travel — by air, bus, automobile, and even bicycle. Can the central govenrment require all individuals to buy, say, bicycles under the banner of healthy living, clean energy and personal transportation? Apparently so.

Under this decision, with this Court, the destruction of our country — through its transformation into a totalitarian regime — comes one step closer to reality.

2012 may be our last chance to save this Republic, if indeed any time remains at all.

 

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.
 

Under his direction, new prosecution rules* put ICE agents in a bureaucratic box if they choose to prosecute illegals, with dozens of new, subjective guidelines. In essence, Obama is forcing ICE agents to release illegals even if they are caught committing crimes.

Just yesterday in Pennsylvania, ICE advised police to release three illegals who had been charged with speeding, driving without a license, without insurance, without registration, and providing police with false identification.

In response, the head of the ICE Agents’ Union, which represents nearly 8,000 immigration enforcement personnel, has leveled withering criticism at the Obama administration for wantonly endangering American citizens.

“Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what’s coming,” said Chris Crane, President of the National ICE Council which represents approximately 7,000 ICE agents, officers and employees, “this is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States. Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the Administration is now implementing it through agency policy … ICE worked hand-in-hand with immigrants rights groups, but excluded its own officers.”

Agents say the policy is a “law enforcement nightmare” developed by the Administration to win votes at the expense of sound and responsible law enforcement policy. “The desires of foreign nationals illegally in the United States were the framework from which these policies were developed,” Crane said, “the result is a means for every person here illegally to avoid arrest or detention, as officers we will never know who we can or cannot arrest.”

…”Our officers are already under orders not to make arrests or even talk to foreign nationals in most cases unless another agency has already arrested them; you won’t find that written in any public ICE policy.”

…”I think the writing is on the wall for every person concerned about good government and effective immigration reforms – the things happening at ICE represent neither, said Crane, we are asking everyone to please email or call your Congressman and Senators immediately and ask them to help stop what’s happening at ICE, we desperately need your help.”

President Obama’s new rules for U.S. immigration agents — which can be legitimately described as a stealth amnesty — are recklessly endangering American citizens.

Write your Congressman now and demand an investigation of ICE. Be polite, but firm. The lives of your family members may depend on it.

I’m no lawyer, but it would seem that this program and others like it — Operation Gunrunner, for example — could very well rise to impeachment level.

* Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion Consistent with the Priorities ofthe Agency for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Aliens (PDF)

Hat tip: News you may have missed. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

Just in time for the end of QE2, when the US needs every possible foreign buyer of US debt to step up to the plate, we get confirmation that yet another major foreign central bank has decided to not only not add to its US debt holdings, but to actively sell US Treasurys… The WSJ reports that “Russia will likely continue lowering its U.S. debt holdings as Washington struggles to contain a budget deficit and bolster a tepid economic recovery…”

Well, with Russia out, at least we have China and Japan continuing to buy US debt…. Oh wait, China is contemplating dumping two thirds of its debt you say? And the biggest buyer of Japanese bonds is now in the process of selling Japanese bonds in the open market for the first time (so not really in the market of US bonds)…

Well, surely US households will step up to the plate. After all they all have so much “cash on the sidelines” courtesy of the RecoveryTM ©® that they can’t wait to dump it all into paper yielding less than 3% a year, and has negative real rates of return. Wait, what’s that: according to the Fed, in Q1 US “households” sold $1.1 trillion annualized in Treasurys to the Fed?

So, let’s get this straight: China, Japan, and now very much openly Russia, the three countries with the largest financial reserves in the world, are threatening, if not already dumping US bonds, just in time for US households to sell their holdings of US paper to Brian Sack. And this is happening 2 weeks before QE2 ends… Um… Are we and Bill Gross (and certainly not Morgan Stanley) the only ones to see a problem with this?

Those rumbling sounds you heard in the background are Ben Bernanke’s printing presses preparing to initiate Quantitative Easings III, IV, V, ad infinitum…

Got Weimar?

 

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

 

I think it would make no sense for her to run. I think her chances of winning the nomination are small. The chances of winning the general election are probably nil. I think, for the same reasons you articulated, 60 percent negatives. That’s almost impossible to overcome. And it isn’t as if that is forever. Hillary Clinton had very high negatives at many points in her career. But over time, they tend to soften.

…The problem with her, I think, is that she is not schooled. I don’t mean she didn’t go to the right schools… But when it comes to policies, she’s had two and a half years to school herself, and she hasn’t. And that’s a problem. You want a president who will be able to not have to learn on the job. We’ve already had that… …with President Obama and with others… It’s the lack of effort to school herself and the lack of insight to see that she needs it…

…I think if you’re going to master policy, especially world affairs, you’ve got to know history. As you said, you have to know how things evolved, and she is weak on that. It’s not as if she can’t learn. The fact is it doesn’t appear as if she wants to sort of sit down, spend some months schooling herself, as many people have done in preparing for the presidency. If you’re a governor of any state, you face a narrow range of issues, and you don’t have to deal with the world. It’s incumbent on you to actually learn about it.

So, just to recap, Sarah Palin can’t win against Barack Obama because she has high negatives, she hasn’t “school[ed] herself”, and she’s weak on history. But an incompetent community agitator with no executive experience, no private sector experience and who is an acolyte of Alinsky is qualified because he has a beautiful, cultured speaking voice.

George Will‘s substantive reasons that Sarah Palin can’t win in 2012:

The independent voters have made up their minds about her, and it is a negative judgment they’ve made… After the 2008 campaign she had two things she had to do: she had to go home to Alaska and study, and she had to govern Alaska well. Instead she quit halfway through her first term and shows up in the audience of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and other distinctly non-presidential venues…

Just to recap: independent voters have a negative opinion of Palin. And the fact that Democrat operatives had filed 18 frivolous lawsuits — all later dismissed — against her (source: Associated Press), which were bankrupting her family, had nothing at all to do with it. That, plus appearing in the audience of Dancing with the Stars, disqualifies her.

Is this really what passes for informed commentary inside the Beltway?

Remember: Krauthammer worked for Walter-Freaking-Mondale in 1980. George Will endorsed Howard Baker in 1980. Both of these guys completely missed the Reagan revolution.

Krauthammer and Will are certainly smart dudes, but their political instincts appear to be for s***.

Palin can win. Bachmann can win. Cain can win. Ryan can win. Santorum can win. Obama is a sitting duck if confronted with a true, articulate Constitutional conservative.

He’s a walking, talking disaster as President. And everyone knows it.

By the way, I’ve been out of town for a while. How are those Stimulus, HAMP, Cash-for-Clunkers, Weatherization, Green Jobs, Obamacare, “Banking Reform”, drilling moratorium, First-Time Home-Buyer Credit, auto company takeovers and QE2 programs working out?

 
Hat tips: Mark Levin and Gateway Pundit.
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

An extensive study released Wednesday in the journal Business and Politics found that the investments of members of the House of Representatives outperformed those of the average investor by 55 basis points per month, or 6 percent annually, suggesting that lawmakers are taking advantage of inside information to fatten their stock portfolios.

…Despite the GOP’s reputation as the party of the rich, House Republicans fared worse than their Democratic colleagues when it comes to investing, according to the study. The Democratic subsample of lawmakers beat the market by 73 basis points per month, or 9 percent annually, versus 18 basis points per month, or 2 percent annually, for the Republican sample…

…Strict laws ban corporate executives from trading on their insider knowledge, but no restrictions exist for members of Congress. Lawmakers are permitted to keep their holdings and trade shares on the market, as well as vote on legislation that could affect their portfolio values…

Government is the most powerful, unaccountable and monopolistic “corporation” of all. Which is why the Framers created the Constitution the way they did: to constrain government, not us.

Consider the Democrat swamp un-drained.

 
Related: The Secret Garden (and Mansion) of Christopher Dodd

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

Democrats believe that stealing furniture from someone’s home — if it’s in the best interest of your family — is a legally acceptable practice.

Democrats believe that you are within your rights to crash a rich man’s party if you’re hungry, because he’s got plenty of extra food.

Democrats believe that any person, should they require access to clean facilities like showers, toilets, and towels, must be legally permitted to break into a health club.

And because Internet access is a human right, Democrats believe that those without it are legally allowed to break into office buildings to obtain web access.

I know all this to be true.

Because Democrat politicians believe that millions of foreigners have every right to enter our home — our sovereign republic — to use our schools, our health care system, our roads, and our infrastructure. Democrats believe that immigration laws aren’t laws at all; for, in fact, they are suing states for enforcing the very immigration laws that Congress passed!

These temporary politicians — these useless Democrats hacks — no longer represent the people. They represent illegal aliens, who are trespassing in our country; who are entering our land without any background checks or vetting procedures; who are driving up unemployment among citizens; who often come for free health care services or schooling or more nefarious reasons; who do not understand the history or traditions of this country; and whose presence here will ultimately Balkanize this country in ways no one can possibly foresee.

For Democrats, clinging to political power trumps the Constitution; it trumps the laws they have passed; it trumps the concerns of the citizenry; it trumps every moral and ethical tenet of this country. But their appetite for raw power is so insatiable, and it is so naked and malevolent, that they are willing to sacrifice future generations so they can climax on their unchecked power.

Therefore I urge you, America’s citizens, to remember the permanent damage these temporary politicians are doing to this country. I urge you to remember in 2012 and to obliterate the Democrat Party politically — at every level of government.

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

Gold is in a bubble. Anyone will tell you that. They’ve been saying it since gold was about, oh, $500 an ounce.

But it’s a funny kind of a bubble. It’s the only one I’ve encountered where so few people seem to own the asset in question… During the dot-com bubble, you met lots of people with tech stocks. Taxi drivers told you what dot-coms they owned.

During the housing bubble you met normal, ordinary people who were trading up to expensive homes using adjustable-rate mortgages, buying new condos off plan to flip, and cashing out their fictional “equity” through a refinance mortgage.

But who actually owns gold? I keep hearing about the gold bubble, but every time I ask people if they own any themselves, they say, “no, no, of course not, it’s a bubble.”

Some bubble…

[The accompanying chart] compares the bull market in gold with the last two undisputed “bubbles,” namely tech stocks and housing. It shows the gold price since 2001, the Nasdaq Composite COMP from 1989 to 2001, and Standard & Poor’s index of Homebuilding stocks from 1995 to 2007.

The picture is pretty remarkable.

If gold is a “bubble,” it doesn’t look like it’s peaked yet. Indeed it looks like it might be just about to enter its big, blow-off phase.

Gold is a quirky investment, to be sure, and I’m about the last person to advise anyone on anything when it comes to financial matters.

But one thing is certain: the administration’s policy of “Quantitative Easing” (or, as I like to call it, “Quantitative Bankrupting of America’s Future”) has unleashed the Treasury’s printing press like nothing ever seen in world history.

Trillions in cash has materialized from thin air as the Treasury Department issues IOUs and the Federal Reserve purchases them on the open market. Which, by the way, enriches Goldman Sachs (and other so-called “primary dealers”) with tens of millions of dollars in needless commissions each month.

Until the money-printing stops, until the deficit spending is brought under control, and until the dollar is rescued from the most radical administration in American history, I would hold some precious metals like gold.

It’s a hedge against governmental stupidity — and heaven knows we need it now more than ever.

Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.
 

• 1/7/2011: Boehner Doubles Down On Promise To Cut $100 Billion: “Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday doubled down on $100 billion in cuts. ‘No ifs, ands or buts about it,’ he said.”

• 2/20/2011: House Approves $61 Billion Spending Cuts, Raising Risk of Federal Shutdown: “Senate Democrats already have said they won’t accept the cuts in the $1.2 trillion spending bill, and Obama’s budget office has threatened a presidential veto. ”

• 3/2/2011: Boehner: Compromise Will Trim GOP’s $61 Billion Budget Cuts: “Responding to a question Tuesday about whether he foresees the House ultimately budging from the $61 billion figure, the Ohio Republican did not say that the chamber would hold firm when the Senate returns their proposal, which will likely include less than a $61 billion reduction in spending levels.”

• 3/10/2011: Tea Party pressures Boehner in budget battle: “Complaints by Tea Party Republicans have already forced Boehner to almost double the amount of spending cuts proposed this year from $32 billion.”

• 4/4/2011: Boehner says $33 billion in cuts is not enough: “I’ve made clear that their $33 billion is not enough and many of the cuts that the White House and Senate Democrats are talking about are full of smoke and mirrors. That’s unacceptable,” the Speaker said.

• 4/7/2011: Interviewed on ABC News, Speaker Boehner vows not to shut down the government over a 2011 “continuing resolution” budget impasse: “I’ve said that 1,000 times since the first of the year. I do not want to shut the government down. I think that is irresponsible.” [Ed: As an aside, the government has been shut down numerous times in recent years including a 21-day impasse during the Clinton administration.]

• 4/12/2011: Boehner touts fact that ”Budget Agreement Eliminates Funding for Obama Czars’ as a reason to support the continuing resolution budget deal.

• 4/14/2011: Boehner: I’m standing by the $38 billion number: Boehner stands by the $38 billion in cuts, saying that this was really “$78.5 billion less than what the president wanted to spend… [and that he was] very disappointed in [Obama’s] speech yesterday,”

• 4/15/2011: CBO Says Spending Cuts Aren’t As Advertised: “The Congressional Budget Office reports that the $38 billion in cuts to the budget for the current fiscal year will actually reduce this year’s deficit by only about $352 million.”

• 4/16/2011: Boehner’s office is not surprised Obama found a way to circumvent Congress, according to a staffer. A spokesman for Boehner said that the Speaker was not surprised that Obama has chosen to ignore the budget rider eliminating funding for the “Czars”.

In other words, Boehner held the trump card — a partial shutdown of the government — in his hands and threw it away. Without leverage, he was unable to live up to anything resembling his promises. Promises that the American people support and demand.

As Paul Ryan put it after witnessing the president’s hyper-partisan campaign speech on Wednesday, “the gauntlet has been thrown down” by Obama. He’s gone all in. The big entitlement programs and the American economic system itself are headed for collapse. That’s not what I say. That’s what Peter Orszag, Obama’s former economic adviser, says: ‘If policymakers will not act before we have a fiscal crisis at the federal level, a fiscal crisis we will ultimately have.’

We need a new Speaker of the House. Someone who understands that we’re up against true sixties radicals. These are people who want to see the whole society burn down. Because that’s where we’re headed without a major course correction.

We need a fighter and a competent negotiator. Boehner has proven that he ain’t it.

How does Speaker of the House Allen West sound?

Related: “Obama: Yeah, I know Democrats Agreed to the 2011 Spending Deal, But the Speaker’s an Idiot for Believing We’d Abide By It”

 

And it’s all been facilitated by horrific policies set down by the FCC and Congress, who have benefited mightily over the decades by thoroughly abusing their power to regulate.

AT&T is rallying its already massive lobbying efforts in Washington D.C., to get regulatory approval of its plan to buy Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA for $39 billion.

The WSJ reports that AT&T has a sizable lobbying army in D.C., with 93 lobbyists working its behalf. AT&T spent $15.5 million to lobby the federal government last year…

Gee, but I’m sure that’s all coincidental.

And it looks like money will win out over the interests of the consumer as even the left-leaning FCC chairman appears to be open to the deal.

Executive Summary: the FCC is going to help reconstitute Ma Bell all over again. Let’s call it Ma Bell 2.0.

The damage to the economy will be significant as it results in less competition, less risk-taking, less entrepreneurship, and less innovation. Higher prices for consumers and a step backwards for the U.S.

I can prove it.

Think of the most unregulated marketplace in the U.S. One with the least government intervention. If you answered software and Internet applications, you’re a winner.

Over the last 25 years, the largely unregulated world of software has created untold trillions in value creation: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, eBay, Oracle, Facebook… the list goes on and on. Anyone with a good idea and some hacking skills can create a business worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

No regulation. Unfettered competition.

But our disastrous telecom policy-makers can’t stop regulating. If the federal government wants to spend money, it should subsidize fiber optic and wireless infrastructure to every home and every business to help give consumers more choice of pipe. Nowadays Internet connectivity is as basic a service as water or sewer lines.

The government should be there to promote commerce, not inhibit it.

The country that invented the Internet is quickly turning into a technological backwater thanks to the crony capitalism of the FCC, Congress and the telco/cable duoply.

They are invested in the past — and no possible good can come from this deal. I’ll put it this way: do you trust America’s entrepeneurs or a Ma Bell reconstituted by a bunch of hacks in Washington?

Related: Beltway Comix: the FCC watchin’ out for the little guy. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t be a progressive and honestly take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. The progressive agenda is completely, utterly at odds with America’s highest law.

And no one makes this more clear than ex-SEIU official Steve Lerner, who patiently explained a few days ago how the Democrats, the unions and the Soros globalists are helping to destroy the United States from within.

The headings are my “reader’s digest” version — but the words are those of the Leftists who are plotting to destroy you, your children and your way of life. But don’t listen to me: listen to them.

W: We’re going to hear from Steve Lerner next, of SEIU, the Architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign. Currently, he’s working on partnering with unions and groups in Europe and South America, it’s building campaigns to hold financial institutions accountable.

The Left’s Goal: to Destabilize the United States Financial System

S. Lerner: It seems to me that we’re in a moment where we need to figure out in a much more, through direct action, much more concrete way how we really are trying to disrupt and create uncertainty for capital, for how corporations operate. And it may sound like that’s a crazy thing that in a moment of weakness we could deal with it, but the thing about a boom and bust economy, it is actually incredibly fragile, because it’s not based on real way, well, it’s based on gambling and all of that. And so there are actually extraordinary things that we could do right now that would start to de, destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement…

Start by Collapsing the Banks

…And for example, 10% of homeowners, going back to where you started, who are under, a quarter of all people who own a home are under water. Right? Their home is under water, they’re paying more for it than it’s worth. Ten percent of those people are now in strategic default, meaning they’re refusing to pay but they’re staying in their homes. That’s totally spontaneous. Right? They figured out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because the mort, the foreclosure’s backed up. I’m going to say I won’t pay. It’s just what business does, it’s a good, a good business decision. If you could double that number, you would make banks, put banks on the edge of insolvency again.

How the Left Will Accomplish Collapse of the System

And so the question would be, what would happen if we organized homeowners in mass to do a mortgage strike. Just say if we get, and, and, if we get half a million people to agree, we’ll all not, we’ll agree we won’t pay our mortgages, it would literally cause a new financial crisis.

Let’s go after J.P. Morgan!

…So, a bunch of us around the country are thinking about who would be a really good company to hate? We decided that would be JP Morgan Chase. …. And so we’re going to roll out over the next couple of months what will hopefully be an exciting campaign about JP Morgan Chase that is really about challenge the power of Wall Street. And so what we’re looking at is in the first week of May, we get enough people together – we’re starting now – to really have a week of action in New York with the goal of … I don’t want to go into any details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room, but the goal would be that we would roll out in New York the first week in May—

We’re Going to Foment Civil Unrest and Break Down the Civil Society

[We] …connect three ideas – that we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money; they have the money, we need to get it back; and that they’re using Bloomberg and other people in government as the vehicle to try to destroy us. And so that we need to take on those folks at the same time and that will start here. We’re going to look at a week of civil disobedience, direct action all over the city, then we’ll roll into the JP Morgan shareholder meeting, which they moved out of New York because they were afraid, I guess, of Columbus, where there’s going to be a ten state mobilization to try to shut down that meeting. And then looking at bank shareholder meetings around the country and try to create some moments like Madison, except where we’re on offense instead of defense. Where we have brave and heroic battles challenging the power of the giant corporations, and we hope to sort of inspire a much bigger movement about redistributing wealth and power in the country.

‘Create Conditions of Ungovernability’ (Overthrow the Government)

W: You were talking about why unions are so invested because of their pension plans and why ungovernability, as Frances Fox Piven and Cloward taught us, you know, poor peoples’ movements are successful when they create conditions of ungovernability. And then you win victories…

If we had a real Attorney General, Lerner would be arrested on the spot for plotting to overthrow the United States government. For waging war against the American people and our Constitution.

I hear that used to be a crime. In fact, if memory serves, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt executed a few American citizens on that charge.

Hat tip: Protein Wisdom. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

One would think that the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” could do better than resorting to the hysterical, shrill and uncivil hyperbole laced throughout its op-ed “Holding Firm on the Budget.”

After all, weren’t these the very same kooks that lectured the Right about “civility” and “tone” after the horrific Tucson attacks?

After letting a highly destructive budget fight fester far too long, the White House finally stepped in late last week to negotiate with the House, which wants to eviscerate nondefense spending. Senate leaders still seem shell-shocked by that breathtaking ruthlessness, and have pleaded with the administration for help in pushing back. The White House needs to do so, and firmly.

Last year the administration acted as referee in a similar situation and got mixed results. It allowed Republicans their cherished goal of keeping taxes low on the richest 2 percent of Americans, and even gave multimillionaires and billionaires new estate tax benefits. President Obama won an extension of jobless benefits and a cut in payroll taxes that could boost the economy.

…But this is not a moment for another difference-splitting deal. The House wants to carve $61 billion out of the government for just the next seven months, which would throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work and kill off scores of vital functions.

The Times’ intellectual dishonesty is legendary due, in no small part, to secretions like this one.

And its spendaholic hubris is highlighted by Mary Meeker’s recent report that, without a hint of political enmity, paints a picture of impending fiscal calamity for the United States. That, of course, the Times chooses to ignore — just as it ignored the most important book in a generation, a monumental bestseller focused on American history, law, philosophy, jurisprudence and economics.

This era’s editions of The New York Times are useful only as curiosities: museum pieces that serve to warn future generations against journalists joining with the government to promote lawlessness, theft and oppression.

Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

Wrong.

…the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the largest teachers union in the state, has grossly abused [collective bargaining] for decades, resulting in the unnecessary siphoning of millions of dollars from Wisconsin public schools. Under current Wisconsin law, the [choice] of the insurance company that provides health coverage to school employees is a matter of collective bargaining in each school district.

In the majority of districts around the state, WEAC negotiators have used that law to pressure local school boards into purchasing coverage from WEA Trust, an insurance company established by and closely associated with the union.

WEA Trust offers very comprehensive health coverage, at a very high cost to schools… A few dozen districts have managed to dump WEA Trust insurance over the past few years [and] they managed to save at least six figures their first year with a different carrier, and maintained steady rates in subsequent years, while still offering quality health coverage to employees.

Officials from other districts say they’re also eager to dump WEA Trust coverage, but need their employees’ anonymous claim histories from WEA Trust to share with other bidders. Several say they have never requested that information because they were told WEA Trust would punish them by pulling them out of local insurance pools, resulting in skyrocketing premiums.

Today many Wisconsin school boards consider themselves stuck with expensive WEA Trust health coverage, until state law is altered to take the identity of the insurance carrier off the collective bargaining table. Gov. Scott Walker’s current legislative proposal would do just that, giving school boards the opportunity to freely shop for insurance and save millions of tax dollars for instructional purposes.

Governor Walker has cited WEA Trust as a primary reason for reforming collective bargaining.

WEA Trust has grown very fat on public school dollars, with a net worth of $316 million and a team of 12 administrators all receiving compensation packages worth six figures per year… Sadly, this insurance swindle is endorsed by state law.

…most unions have traditionally come to the negotiating table demanding expensive WEA Trust insurance coverage, and the strategy has been effective. About 64 percent of Wisconsin’s 426 districts carry WEA Trust insurance, despite its prohibitive costs.

…WEAC pressures its local union officials to stick with WEA Trust. One district administrator told us about a meeting where everyone present, including union employees, agreed that a non-WEA health plan would be better for the district. He said state WEAC representatives were present and argued in favor of WEA Trust, just because it’s the union’s insurance brand.

…With the law on their side, many local unions won’t even consider alternative health coverage. They refuse to have the WEA Trust language taken out of their contract at bargaining time. If a school board wants to contest the coverage, the unions will frequently take the fight to arbitration.

Many school officials accuse WEA Trust officials of purposefully withholding insurance claim histories from districts that want to seek other insurance bids. That makes it nearly impossible for competing companies to prepare informed bids based on recent insurance activity in a district. It would be like asking a contractor to bid on a demolition project, without disclosing the size or condition of the building.

Those districts that seek claim histories are often threatened with higher insurance rates by WEA Trust, according to several sources.

This fight is about more than just benefits: it’s about a rigged insurance operation that no one in their right mind would choose if given a real choice in the matter.

WEA Trust stands to lose millions through Governor Walker’s heroic actions on behalf of the taxpayer – which is why the union bosses have reacted with violence, angry rhetoric and near-riots in the state capitol.

It has nothing to do with the kids. The union bosses want to steal more of your money with a crooked and rigged insurance scam.

 

Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

I want to politely address my dear friend — and she is my dear friend — Ann Coulter. We’ve had some email exchanges.

What is your great love of Chris Christie based on? The man supports gun control. The man appoints a radical Islamist to a judgeship. The man is for amnesty [for illegal aliens]. The man is, to some extent, part of the “green” movement. He campaigned for Michael Castle.

And it’s interesting. [Mitt] Romney is being attacked, correctly by the way, for RomneyCare. Yet here we have Obamacare, we have 28 states challenging it: 26 states in one suit; Virginia in another suit; Oklahoma in another suit — and New Jersey’s sitting on the sidelines.

Why? I cannot believe it’s the cost. Because I have offered, as have others, to do it for free. Just sign your name on a brief. That’s free. And yet Christie sits on the sidelines.

So he either supports [Obamacare] or I don’t know what. Maybe while Romney’s explaining RomneyCare, Christie can explain his [tacit support of] Obamacare.

But the idea that if we don’t back Christie, who’s already said he’s not qualified enough to be president, that Romney is the winner and that we were warned about McCain, is a little rewrite of history. Nobody was more against McCain than I. Then at the very end I said we had to vote for him to stop Obama. But I fought him every step of the way. Ask McCain’s people. They hate me. Feeling’s mutual!

Anyway, it’s a little bizarre to me. The way I see Chris Christie is he’s Christine Todd Whitman as a male. I do like his fiscal positions. I do like the way he deals with the public sector teachers’ unions. That’s all to the good.

But when you’re the president of the United States, you’ve got a whole lot of issues that affect a whole lot of people.

And it’s not good enough to be good on one out of 20. So this [obsession with Christie] I don’t get.

I agree completely. Christie has a number of troubling positions — some even outright bizarre — that seriously limit his acceptability as a GOP nominee. At least until he explains himself thoroughly on these issues.

Coulter isn’t usually off-key on these sorts of things: but she couldn’t be more wrong with her premature statements regarding Christie. Nominating another mushy centrist — and I count the governor of New Jersey as one, based upon his track record — will guarantee Barack Obama a victory in the general. And that we cannot accept if this Republic is to survive.

Image adapted from: Politico. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

• “More and more Americans are being left behind in an economy that is being divided ever more starkly between the haves and the have nots.”

• “As poverty increases and reliable employment becomes less and less the norm, the dwindling number of workers with any sort of job security or guaranteed pensions (think teachers and other modestly compensated public employees) are being viewed with increasing contempt.”

• “…there are not enough tax revenues being generated to pay for the basic public services that one would expect in an advanced country like the U.S. The rich are not shouldering their fair share of the tax burden.”

• “The U.S. cannot cut its way out of this crisis.”

• “Long-term joblessness is a recipe for societal destabilization. It should not be tolerated in a country with as much wealth as the United States. It’s destructive, and it’s wrong.”

Hey, everyone: the genius Bob Herbert thinks anyone who pays taxes isn’t paying enough. Don’t be fooled about his rhetoric concerning “the rich”: you could confiscate every penny from the rich and it wouldn’t be enough.

Hell, former Obama budget director Peter Orszag admitted as much last September, noting that a “middle-class tax increase is unavoidable, but it will probably take a bond crisis to push politicians to act.”

No, folks: apparently Bob Herbert believes you’re not paying enough. After all, you’re only paying federal, state and local income taxes. FICA and Medicare taxes. Property taxes. Excise taxes. Gas taxes. Sales taxes. Fees for registering your car, your dog, adding on to your house. Taxes on your phone calls, your cable TV, your Internet connections. Can you think of anything that isn’t taxed?

And don’t say breathing because the EPA is working on carbon dioxide regulations as we speak.

In short, Bob Herbert believes that government isn’t big enough! Despite massive borrowing, crippling levels of debt at every level of government, imminent bankruptcy for states and municipalities, and pension plans that are collapsing as we speak, Herbert wants more government control!

Bob Herbert is going to cure unemployment by taking more money from the employers.

Yes, folks, this is what passes for informed commentary among the Leftists. They are all economic illiterates who view government as some sort of heroic enterprise and private business as the enemy. And yet they complain about unemployment while pillorying the engines of job creation.

Herbert’s intellectual peers have created endless bureaucracies, endless agencies, endless central planning experiments, and Politburo-style control of every aspect of our lives. They control health care, how cars are built, the kind of mileage cars must achieve, where we can drill for oil and gas, how much water can flow into a toilet, light bulb design, carbon dioxide emission, how much dust a farmer can kick into the air, “light pollution”, and tens of thousands of other areas.

Herbert and his ilk have created hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations, laws and dictates. They have authored so many different rules that no one on the planet has a full grasp of their scope.

And still they are not enough for the Times and its preeminent dimwit, Bob Herbert.

The progressives’ greed has no limits. Because they never learn: no matter how many times their Statist agenda fails, they insist it was because it wasn’t big enough.

Bob Herbert is a thought leader for progressives, which proves once and for all that liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid. There can no longer be any argument over that issue.

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

It didn’t take long for the loons at ThinkRegress to begin attacking the memory of the 20th century’s greatest president. The culmination of their effort — ‘10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan‘ — is a list of Reagan’s policies that conservatives supposedly want to hide from the general public.

Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill.

ThinkProgress’ “top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan” are as follows:

“ 1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser” – Reagan suffered from overwhelming Democrat majorities in Congress when he took office. While he desperately wanted to strip away huge swaths of government (including eliminating the then newly created Department of Education), he had no choice but to compromise with the Democrats who controlled the budgetary purse-strings. When Reagan left office, the top marginal tax rate was 28% (today’s it’s 35% and under Bill Clinton it was nearly 40%).

“2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit by enacting a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously” – Another flat-out lie. Before his 25 percent across-the-board cut in individual income-tax rates went into effect, government receipts from individual income taxes trickled in at $244.1 billion. The year Reagan left office, they totaled $445.7 billion — an 82 percent jump. As for the deficits, Democrats outspent every one of the nine budgets Reagan proposed but one. Further, Democrats refused to make corresponding cuts in wasteful domestic programs to offset the defense appropriations Reagan needed to combat the Soviet Union after the Carter administration’s foreign policy disasters (e.g., Iran, Afghanistan, et. al.).

“3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts” – Before the full tax-relief package was passed — against the wishes of many Democrats, by the way — the jobless rate hit 9.6 percent. But as the cuts rippled through the economy, unemployment dropped every year after 1983, reaching a low of 5.3 percent in 1989. And tax cuts benefited minorities, too. The jobless rate among blacks plunged from 19.5 percent in 1983 to 11.4 percent in 1989.

“4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously” – this again omits the role of Congressional Democrats who controlled the purse-strings and refused to axe the programs and agencies that Reagan requested. In fact, the media portrayed Reagan as “heartless” and depicted him as “laughable and malevolent” for his attempts to strip away the federal bureaucracy. But the only way the Democrat Congress would accept a defense buildup and tax cuts was for Reagan to agree to their domestic spending agenda. In fact, the budget deficits of the 1980s made the surpluses in the 1990s possible; the balanced budget was aided by surging tax revenues from a healthy, low-tax economy and immense defense savings made possible by the fall of the Soviet Union.

“5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose [sic]” – Reagan was adamant about ending the practice of ‘abortion on demand’ and proposed that legislation be drafted to do so (you can hear Reagan’s 1983 address on this subject); but he “had little success in gaining its acceptance by Congress.”

“ 6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.”” – this is sheer revisionist idiocy; Reagan believed, first and foremost, in peace through strength. He gave dozens of speeches on this topic, rebuilt the U.S. military after Carter had stripped it bare, and created the impetus for the oft-derided SDI (“Star Wars”) program that has since become an essential part of U.S. national security strategy. His famous slogans on this topic were “peace through strength” and “trust but verify”.

“ 7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants” – The Democrat leadership in Congress promised to enact strict enforcement measures as a trade for a one-time amnesty deal. In an effort to control the border, Reagan went along with the deal. At the time (1986), the measures were marketed by Democrats as as being able to stop illegal immigration. Ted Kennedy himself sold the enforcement clauses of the law as strong enough to ensure that only a one-time amnesty would be needed. But, as is their standard practice, Democrats lied about sealing the border.

Reagan himself said, “This country has lost control of its borders. And no country can sustain that kind of position.”

“ 8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran” -Democrats launched a six-year, $40 million investigation of Reagan in a politically inspired witch-hunt. Reagan was, in fact, found guilty of absolutely nothing. Furthermore, indictments were intentionally handed down mere days before the 1992 election that pitted George H. W. Bush against Bill Clinton — presumably to levy the maximum amount of political damage on the GOP candidate. Near the end of the investigations, The Baltimore Sun reported that a “federal trial judge in Washington dismissed Oliver North’s conviction” and that “[c]riticism of Mr. Walsh’s prosecution and of the law that authorized it will become more intense [because the] public has gotten precious little from his [at the time] $30 million, four-year effort”.

“9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act” – Reagan vehemently opposed apartheid (“Apartheid is morally wrong and politically unacceptable [... the] United States cannot maintain cordial relations with [such] a government“) but he did not support the approach advocated by Congress. He issued an executive order restricting trade with the Pretoria government and virtually ended inter-bank dealings. But he believed that Congress’ unilateral sanctions would harm blacks most of all and eradicate all of the leverage he wanted to bring to bear on South Africa. He wanted a timetable for the elimination of apartheid laws, the release of all political prisoners (especially Nelson Mandela) and a removal of the ban on black political movements. He felt he could not negotiate with the South African government if he had nothing to trade. His 1986 speech — “Ending Apartheid in South Africa” — comprehensively described his plans and approach.

“ 10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden” – Gee, next they’ll be complaining that we had to side with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis. This sort of leftist lunacy simply rewrites history. We needed to sabotage the Soviets’ efforts in Afghanistan to prevent a dramatic power-shift in the Middle East. Blaming Reagan for the Taliban and Bin Laden is like blaming Henry Ford for the problem of too many scrap tires.

And professionals receive performance reviews?

How about Democrats? Do Democrats ever look back? Ever do any introspection?

How’s FDR’s Social Security program doing? On solid ground after being sold to the American people as insurance, but defended in the Supreme Court as a tax?

What happened to all of those trillions of dollars paid in by retirees? Could it be that Social Security is bankrupt and headed to collapse in just a couple of decades?

Oh, and I’ve been out of town. How did LBJ’s “Great Society” work out? All of those housing projects and wealth transfers? Did that “War on Poverty” succeed?

And how’s ‘Chain Migration’ doing? Letting illegals stream over the border, give birth and claim citizenship? That working out well? All that Balkanization of large swaths of the United States? Going swimmingly?

And Medicare? You know, the medical program that is hemorrhaging $100 billion a year in fraud alone? How’s that Medicare ‘trust fund’ working out? Going well?

And the Democrats’ incessant push to lower eligibility for welfare payments, food stamps and tax credits? Is that cutting down on single-parent families and inner-city blight?

Oh — and how’s that Post Office thingy doing? Making lots of money? The paragon of efficiency?

What about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? How’d those ‘job shops for connected Democrats’ turn out? Those help the economy?

Anyone know what ever happened with the SEC? They still protecting investors from crooks like Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford? Keeping folks safe from AIG and Enron?

Couldn’t we evaluate what’s in place now? Before implementing a trillion-dollar “Stimulus” program, Cap-and-Trade, socialized medicine, a 2400-page “financial overhaul”, and “comprehensive immigration reform”?

No. Democrats never look back. Never learn from failure. Never educate themselves. Because their ideology trumps history, facts, logic and reason. Which is why we must defeat them in 2012. Before it’s too late.
 
 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

In the process, however, GE has become emblematic of crony capitalism with its deep and intricate ties to the Democrat Party and the Obama administration in particular.

At Daily Finance, Peter Cohan describes how GE’s recently announced aviation deal in China endangers America’s economic and national security interests.

How GE Is Arming China to Compete With Boeing — and America

General Electric (GE) plans to sell its aircraft electronics to Chinese companies, and if you don’t have a problem with that, maybe you should. After all, China just flight-tested a prototype stealth fighter, it continues to build up its military — and we can only hope it’s not planning to expand its territory in ways that threaten the U.S.

But if China does decide to get aggressive with the U.S., GE will have provided it with the aircraft technology it will be using.

According to The New York Times, GE is signing a deal to sell avionics technology — electronics that control an aircraft’s basic in-flight operations — to Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (CACC), which aspires to build commercial and military aircraft. GE will do this through a joint venture with a Chinese company, Aviation Industry Corp. of China (Avic). Avic makes avionics for CACC and for China’s military — including its stealth fighter.

Cohan, a Babson College professor, believes “GE [is] betraying its customers and its country” because China represents a $400 billion market for its aircraft products by 2030.

Cohan believes that Crony Capitalists like GE’s senior management are “making the decisions that will determine America’s fate.”

This is a discomfiting thought indeed — and General Electric’s shareholders need to make their voices heard before this deal is a fait accompli.

Infomercials for Socialized Medicine

This isn’t the first time that GE has appeared to have a dramatic conflict with the best interests of the American people. Consider its actions related to socialized medicine — better known as Obamacare — and its advocacy efforts of same.

Remember that GE Capital — another unit of General Electric — received approximately $140 billion in taxpayer funds in 2008 as part of the initial financial bailout.

Which makes it curious that the Obama administration earmarked another six billion in GE funds (or are they taxpayer funds?) to a new GE firm called Healthymagination.

At a recent conference, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt claimed that America’s economic crisis was not simply an economic crisis. It was instead a “reset”, where companies that intersect with government will “prosper… and people who don’t understand that will get left behind.”

Immelt, a member of Mr. Obama’s economic recovery advisory board, went on to say that, “The intersection of government and business will be changed, maybe for a generation.”

The business case behind Healthymagination hinged on nationalization of the health care industry. Computerization of health care records is not only a vaunted component of the Obama stimulus package, it is also a $75 to $100 billion business over the next ten years.

Coincidentally, Healthymagination just happens to be building a health care record management system.

Oh, and did I mention NBC? It was involved, too. In 2009 Health Imaging reported that the GE-owned media conglomerate — something out of the movie Rollerball — would also do its part.

• NBC Universal and NBC News would air more than 5,000 televised reports annually on health and wellness.

• MSNBC would launch a new, daily program dedicated solely to health information… in addition to medical issues it would also examine health policy.

The plan was simple: the media would broadcast pro-Obamacare propaganda; government would enact policy “by popular demand”; and the chosen corporation would profit at taxpayer expense.

As Andrew Wilkow observed, “Healthymagination states its target dates for the completion of its various initiatives as 2015, well into a second Obama term. This means GE will have a deep financial interest in Mr. Obama’s re-election; a fact that will no doubt be reflected in its media divisions. It will certainly be interesting to see if the left-wing watchdogs howl, or if they will conclude this is an acceptable level of collusion between the White House and a multinational conglomerate.”

The sale of NBC to Comcast may have thwarted those plans, but the plans themselves were downright disturbing.

It’s up to shareholders to call GE CEO Jeff Immelt on the carpet

What GE appears to be engaging in is not capitalism: it is an unholy alliance of governmental and corporate interests that thwarts the national security and economic interests of the American people to benefit a chosen few senior executives and politicians.

GE’s shareholders must rebel against these un-American — and, frankly, anti-American — activities. GE is a national institution — but its recent activities smack of pure, unmitigated evil.

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

Dupnik’s career traces back decades and involves solving some of history’s most notorious crimes:

Dupnik was the first to identify the infamous serial killer ‘Jack the Ripper’ as an ancestor of William F. Buckley.

“America’s Sheriff” states that Jimmy Hoffa, possibly buried at the Meadowlands, was “whacked” by Barry Goldwater.

Dupnik also believes that Charles Manson was wrongfully imprisoned for the “Redrum” murders of Sharon Tate and others. The sheriff asserts that Tate’s Hollywood connections to Ronald Reagan were never sufficiently explored.

Dupnik agrees with the court that freed O.J. Simpson and ‘knows in his heart’ that Rush Limbaugh is somehow to blame.

Finally, the sheriff has assembled copious amounts of evidence that the Columbine killers were directly inspired by pundits Sean Hannity or Mark Levin.

That’s all the time we have tonight. Join us next week when we celebrate the law enforcement career of Deputy Barney Fife.

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

…the White House will create incentives for doctors to discuss “options” for end of life care through regulation, after Congress removed the incentives from ObamaCare…

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

There is, however, something at least vaguely disturbing about a government incentivizing doctors to do so as part of an expansive regulatory program that has, as one of its primary goals, cost reduction. The process used by Obama and Kathleen Sebelius to get this into ObamaCare is more disturbing, and in a very specific way. Congress made it clear that it didn’t want this incentive as part of the new law. However, thanks to the miles and miles of ambiguity in the final version of ObamaCare, with its repetitive the Secretary shall determine language, Congress has more or less passed a blank check for regulatory growth to Obama and Sebelius.

The implication is extremely easy to understand: “Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”

“While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet,” Mr. Blumenauer’s office said in an e-mail in early November to people working with him on the issue. “This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”

Moreover, the e-mail said: “We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are ‘supporters’ — e-mails can too easily be forwarded.”

The e-mail continued: “Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

Education is the enemy of the Statist.

Unchecked power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats is precisely what our nation’s founders intended to counter with a carefully constructed Constitution.

This disastrous excuse for a health care “reform” bill must be defunded, starved and repealed.

 
Hat tip: Memeorandum. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

The Obama Administration’s Official Alphabet Guide for Learning Government’s Role in Your Life

Hi, I’m Omar, the Obama administration’s official kid’s ambassador. Today I’ll be guiding you through some of the many necessary regulations that government imposes on us for our protection — and we’ll learn the alphabet at the same time!

A is for auto. The size, speed, fuel and bumpers of autos must be regulated to protect us from ourselves!

B is for business. Government must levy taxes, regulations, fees, surcharges and paperwork on businesses, lest they take advantage of workers.

C is for cupcakes. Every aspect of child nutrition must be controlled — because we can’t leave it up to the parents!

D is for doctor. Health care guidelines make sure every doctor practices medicine the same way.

E is for electricity. Americans must expect to do without electricity from time to time, because we use so much of the world’s resources. That is why American coal, nuclear, gas and other sources of energy must be restricted.

F is for fare. Cab fares must be tightly controlled down to the tenth-mile because small business owners simply can not be trusted.

G is for ginkgo and other medicinal herbs, which can not be sold without oversight by the FDA, state and local agencies. They’re looking out for us!

H is for Happy Meals. Selling toys with food is an evil marketing tactic, which kids and parents should not be exposed to!

I is for immigrants, documented or not. We must welcome everyone into our country, because open borders and a welfare state promote tolerance and unity.

J is for junk-mail. No longer can marketers promote their products without a complete review by federal, state and local authorities.

K is for knives. Even pen knives and bottles of shampoo represent threats to airline safety and must be confiscated for our protection!

L is for lollipop. Only organic lollipops that contain less than 25 grams of sugar can be sold in the U.S. It’s for our protection!

M is for MRI machine. Overrated tests and diagnostics aren’t always needed for seniors, based upon the government’s “Complete Lives System“, which ensures fair and equitable treatment for most healthy Americans.

N is for NEA, the teacher’s union that has its first priority educamating us kids (after electing big government politicians, that is)!

O is for oil, the source of automotive energy around the world. Government must prevent drilling for oil because cars represent freedom to move around the country.

P is for prescription drugs. For safety reasons, government must put drug manufacturers through decades of testing and regulatory hoops even if certain patients could use experimental drugs. These dying patients could actually die if they’re exposed to drugs that aren’t ready for the market!

Q is for QWERTY keyboards, the electric current, operation and safety for which must be reviewed by multiple agencies for our protection.

R is for the rich. At some point, they’ve made enough money. Those who have grown too wealthy on the backs of the workers should have their excess riches confiscated for redistribution.

S is for shower-head. Unrestricted flow wastes water, which is why government must regulate how all shower-heads work.

T is for toilet. All toilet designs must be reviewed by federal officials to ensure less wasted water.

U is for unions. Unions are collectives of workers who band together to protect workers and elect big government politicians.

V is for vending machine. Government needs to set standards for what kinds of drinks and snacks may be sold to gullible consumers.

W is for warmal colding, the climate change phenomenon caused by humans which results in crazy streaks of hot and cold weather.

X is for X-ray machine. X-rays are discouraged in medical settings (for cost reasons) but used extensively in airline security.

Y is for yacht. Democrat leaders like John Kerry use yachts to visit constituents, but others who own them should be considered overly rich.

Z is for zebra-suits — the nickname for federal prisoners who violate the hundreds of thousands of regulations that protect us 24 hours a day!

 
 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.