TPPF COMMENTARY: Carbon audacity

by Kathleen Hartnett White

The ever-widening recession apparently will not delay the Obama Administration’s plans to mandate carbon reductions.

Last week, the administration’s two most senior decision-makers on climate change stated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will declare that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant endangering human health within the legal meaning of the Clean Air Act. White House climate czar Carol Browner and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that EPA will make this “endangerment finding” to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling driving EPA’s decision.

Ms. Browner claimed that this decision would actually help the deteriorating economy by providing the legal clarity needed for investment in carbon mitigation. What happened to EPA’s recent economic analysis of carbon cuts, predicting annual declines in America’s Gross Domestic Product, millions of lost jobs, and 50-150 percent increases in energy prices within 10 years?

The silver lining the administration sees in exorbitant carbon mandates imposed on a recessionary economy: federal revenues from the sale of carbon allowances. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, acknowledged that the administration’s budget includes the government’s sale of carbon allowances to generate billions in new federal revenues – potentially $300 billion a year according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

President Obama has consistently advocated auction of even the initial allowances in a carbon cap and tax/trade schemes. This means a power plant would have to purchase federal approval merely to keep operating at current levels.

Legislation creating this colossal carbon tax would be the biggest tax increase ever, surpassing in real dollars the 1942 law providing funds for World War II. If included in budget reconciliation bills – which cannot be filibustered – it would only require 50 votes in the U.S. Senate.

The EPA’s legal endangerment finding on CO2 is key to this policy. The EPA decision would unleash the onerous regulatory scope of the Clean Air Act. Although Browner said the initial regulations would not be too broad, courts are unlikely to give EPA this leeway. Throughout the 30-year history of the Act, environmental organizations have used the courts successfully to compel EPA action. Steadily expanding air quality rules have arisen far more from court rulings and out-of-court settlements than legislation.

Recall that an endangerment finding is connected to the EPA’s blueprint for economic disaster issued last July, the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Regulate Greenhouse Gases. The Bush Administration declined to make the finding whether CO2 is or is not a harmful pollutant but agreed to issue the Notice – apparently a quid pro quo with EPA. A most unusual administrative action, the White House issued and simultaneously condemned the Notice in an accompanying memo signed by five Cabinet secretaries.

An odd preface for his own action, former EPA Administrator Steve Johnson noted that using the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 “could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land.”

EPA’s long-expected endangerment finding is anything but bland news. Once made, the force of federal law mandates the regulation of a mind-boggling scope of human activity. The legal debate about global warming will be over at the stroke of a federal bureaucrat’s pen. The Obama Administration will then have the leverage to design whatever carbon tax it prefers.

The Supreme Court ruling behind EPA’s actions did not dictate that CO2 be declared a pollutant. The 5-4 ruling required that EPA merely make and reasonably justify an endangerment finding, one way or the other. The Bush Administration avoided this formal decision evidently because of irresolvable disagreement between EPA career staff and the White House.

Al Gore, the world’s most celebrated global warming alarmist, repeatedly preaches that carbon cuts of the magnitude needed to “save” the planet will require a “total transformation of our economy.” If the first few weeks are any indication, let there be no doubt in the Obama administration’s willingness to use carbon policy as a major tool in such a mission.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. White is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Texas PolicyCast: The California Disaster Avoidance Plan

Last week, Rep. Ken Paxton of McKinney and Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston held a press conference to announce the filing of House Bill 994 and Senate Bill 928, both of which seek to tighten the state's expenditure limit. We caught up with Rep. Paxton after the event to get his perspective on the legislation.

What do you think?

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Eric Holder: Another “Gem” Brought to You By President Obama

Will Malven
2/26/2009

In Eric Holder, Americans have another perfect example of President Obama’s inept leadership.

As I’ve said all along, Liberals aren’t about doing what is right; they are about doing what feels good and looks good.

Attorney General Eric Holder, freshly returned from the terrorist detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, declared his surprise at the level of competence of the people running the prison and quality of the facilities in which the prisoners are being held. Yet having made this “discovery,” he intends to continue pursuing the insane course laid out in ignorance…for political reasons.

He told the press, reported via CNN:

"I did not witness any mistreatment of prisoners. I think to the contrary I saw a conscious attempt by those guards to conduct themselves in an appropriate way."

Our troops are not the thugs the press and certain Democrat members of Congress have spent the past several years painting them as…who knew?

Well we Conservatives knew back when these allegations first began to circulate courtesy of Democrat propaganda rags like Newsweek Magazine. Conservatives and Republicans knew because, unlike Liberals and Democrats, we support our troops. We believe in them and trust them. We know that, while there will always be a few bad apples in any group of human beings, the vast majority of our men and women in uniform are people of high moral values and strong character who are motivated to serve primarily by a deep and abiding love for their country (another characteristic not shared by Liberal Democrats) and who believe it is their obligation and privilege to do so.

Democrats inherently distrust our military and out troops. They are all too ready to assume the worst about them, because they believe them to be the “dregs of society;” an assumption so far from the truth as to reveal Liberals to be the fools we Conservatives routinely find them to be.

No wonder Democrats like Dick Durban and John Kerry-Heinz inherently distrust them. No wonder the Attorney General of the United States, the man charged with enforcing our laws and protecting our citizens, went to Guantanamo Bay expecting to find a “Soviet gulag” or “Nazi” concentration camp as the deplorable Senator Dick Durban (D-Il) claimed back in June of 2006 when he said on the floor of the Senate:

"If I read this to you and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe that this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that's not the case. This was the action of Americans and treatment of their own prisoners."

How low of an opinion of our military must one have to believe these reports have any credibility?

Small wonder Attorney General Holder went to Guantanamo expecting to find a grim dungeon filled with murderous, sadistic guards and chambers of horror pulled from the imaginary world of a Hollywood melodrama.

Yet, having visited the most notorious military prison in the world (according to our “loyal” press) and discovered that everything he and his boss, President Obama, assumed to be true turned out to be pure bunk and having newly discovered the respect for our men and women in Guantanamo that Conservatives have always had, Attorney General Holder stated that he will still close down the facility, not because it is the right thing to do-he has by his own admission proven the basis for doing so was false-but because it will convey a positive image to the rest of the world.

Once again we have, as usual, Liberals taking actions for the sake of appearances rather than need.

I have a novel idea, why not educate the rest of the world about the truth of Guantanamo and then keep it open, for the good of the citizens of the nation you swore an oath to protect. Why not defend the reputation of our nation and our troops against the slander of those whose intention is to destroy our nation rather than acquiesce to the clamor of anti-American sentiment incited in people around the world by the very press which worked so diligently to get the president elected? Why not...do what is right rather than expedient? What a novel concept.

As far as our newly elected neophyte President is concerned; a promise to his Liberal idiot base is a promise. After all, what’s more important, securing your political base or upholding your oath of office and protecting the American people?

A President of the United States must, above all else, be a man of principle. He must hold firm to the core values of this nation and execute his duties as an American first and a politician second. That is the reason the President Bush, for all his failings and shortcomings, will be seen by historians as great and President Obama, if things don’t change, will be remembered as another Jimmy Carter (for you Liberals, that means an out and out failure).

So we will see “Club Gitmo” closed and dangerous terrorists, determined to destroy our nation and our way of life, released to their home countries to further spread violence and hate against us, or imprisoned in our own penitentiaries on our own soil to spread their toxic beliefs among our prison population.

So much for competence in government. So much for standing on principle. So much for having any principles on which you can stand.

President Barack Obama and his cabinet members; they won’t let doing what is right interfere with doing what is politically expedient. So much for integrity in office.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Senator Byrd Warns Against Presidential Power Grab

Will Malven
2/25/2009

I have a love-hate relationship with Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). Most of the time I loathe the old coot. He is as hateful and partisan a Democrat as there ever has been in Congress, but I love him for one thing. He is one of the few Democrats who hold the Constitution in higher regard than any partisan political opportunity.

Known for carrying his little pocket sized copy of our Constitution in his breast pocket and occasionaly pulling it out to lecture his fellow Senators on its content, he has been a thorn in the sides of Democrats with egregious political aims almost as often as he has stood in opposition to Republican aspirations.

Today, I have to love him. He is warning America and his fellow senators against what Obama is doing in the White House,(just as I cautioned a couple of weeks back in my commentary The Obama Administration: Jimmy Carter Redux...on Steroids ) in creating "czars" over those areas of our society with which he is most concerned. These "czars" are extra-constitutional positions which are intended to side-step the influence of congress on White House policy and normally exercised under the "advice and consent" clause of the Constitution covering the appointment of Cabinet Secretaries.

Here is the POLITICO article:

Byrd: Obama in power grab

By JOHN BRESNAHAN
2/25/09 10:34 AM EST

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest-serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch.

In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

While it's rare for Byrd to criticize a president in his own party, Byrd is a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House. Byrd no longer holds the powerful Appropriations chairmanship, so his criticism does not carry as much weight these days. Byrd repeatedly clashed with the Bush administration over executive power, and it appears that he's not limiting his criticism to Republican administrations.

God Bless Robert Byrd. The concerns he is voicing are real and a threat to our entire constitutional system.

Democrats were very vocal when President Bush used "signing statements" to circumvent those portions of laws which congress had passed, claiming that his actions were "unconstitutional." Problem is, President Bush was not the first president to do so and while the constitutionality of that procedure is questionable, at least there was substantial precedent under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Democrats also accused President Bush of violating the Constitution by employing "warrantless wiretapping" while in pursuit of known terrorist organizations.

In each of these situations the President's actions had legal precedent and sprang out of existing constitutional executive powers. In neither case ws the threat to the Constitution as grave as this attempt to circumvent the entire process of Senatorial review. This is a power grab of unprecedented proportions.

Believe me, Senator Byrd is as partisan a Democrat as there has ever been in Congress. He has done everything he could within the powers given him as a senator to promote and advance the Democrat Party agenda. So when you hear him warning against what this Democrat President is attempting to do, you better sit up and take notice.

He is a constitutional expert and when he issues this kind of warning, it is deadly serious.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Democrat Governor of Tennessee May Reject Portion of Stimulus Money

Will Malven
February 25, 2009

Man. I sure would hate to be Democrat Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. He announced that he was considering rejecting that portion of the stimulus package which extends unemployment benefits for exactly the same reasons that Republican governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina have stated their objections. From the Tennesseean:

Tennessee may reject stimulus aid for jobless

Bredesen balks at conditions tied to federal package, long-term costs

By Chas Sisk
THE TENNESSEAN
February 25, 2009

Tennessee could reject a portion of the $787 billion economic stimulus package out of concerns that it would force the state to raise taxes on businesses in the future.

At the National Governors Association meetings in Washington, D.C., Gov. Phil Bredesen said this week that he might turn down relief for unemployed workers worth an estimated $143 million because of conditions placed on the money by Congress.

The stimulus package would also raise unemployment benefits by $25 a week for all workers, but in addition, lawmakers want states to expand the pool of people who can apply for benefits. That would put more pressure on an unemployment trust fund that is already trying to stave off insolvency.

"We are evaluating this piece of money, whether it makes sense for us to take it," Bredesen said in an interview Monday with the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "We're in the position of going back to our legislature this year for changes in our tax structure just to keep our fund whole, and taking it to a new level may be too much of a lift for the legislature this spring."

Can you imagine the phone calls from his Democratic Party legislators he must be receiving today? Democrats have been blasting Governors Jindal and Sanford for rejecting the same portion of the stimulus package for the same reasons as Bredeson has now voiced. Kind of takes the wind out of Democrats' sails.

Senator Schumer yesterday was calling on the President to make the stimulus package money an "all or nothing" deal thus forcing those recalcitrant Republicans whom he claimed were doing rejecting the increased unemployment money for political reasons. I guess we know now that Governors Jindal, Barbour and Sanford were telling the truth and it was Schumer whose motives were purely political.

I guess even some Democrat's have limits to their hypocrisy. Good for Phil Bredesen for standing up against the Democrats in Congress and doing what he feels is right for his state and his citizens.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Empty Words from an Empty Suit

Will Malven
2/25/1009

President Obama is a great orator, there is little doubt of that. He has the ability to give rousing, inspiring speeches, proving he has mastered the techniques of public speaking. Unfortunately for America his speeches are filled with soaring rhetoric, but little substance.

For those (like me) who were hoping for some detail on how he intends to accomplish his ambitious agenda for America, last night's speech before a joint session of Congress was sorely lacking.

While it is true that one of the President's primary jobs is that of cheerleader, empty bromides and soaring rhetoric alone will not solve America's problems. Once you have reassured the people that America will not fail and reaffirmed our greatness, you must then follow through with proposals which will point the way to that return to greatness.

Simply asserting that your plan will "save or create 3.5 million jobs" (how do you prove how many jobs have been saved?) especially when none of those voting on the bill have read the bill or even know what all has been slipped into it.

Honesty is one of the most important aspects of leading a nation. The people must feel they are able to trust the President if they are going to follow his lead, yet this president has a credibility problem. He made the false assertion that the $780 billion ($1.2 trillion after accrued interest) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was "free of earmarks." Free of earmarks?

Such a claim is not simply inaccurate, it is a blatant lie born out of the arrogance which so typifies this president and the Liberal philosophy he espouses. The truth is that the stimulus package as passed contains a tremendous amount of pork and payments of tribute to the special interest groups which helped Democrats get elected.

LIE - "A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future."

There was no "transfer of wealth to the wealthy." Under President Bush, the wealthy paid a greater share of the taxes than under President Clinton. The truth is phrases like "investing in our future" when uttered by a Liberal means a transfer of wealth from those who produce to those who don't.

LIE - "Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market."

Regulations were gutted...by Democrats...not "for the sake of a quick profit," but for the sake of political gain.

HALF-TRUTH - "People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway."

True, people bought homes they knew they couldn't afford, but they bought them because the Democrats in Congress pushed banks to make those bad loans; again for political gain.

HALF-TRUTH - "Critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."

Those critical debates and decisions were put off at the behest of the President's own party leaders. Republicans repeatedly warned against what was occurring in the housing market, but were rebuffed in each case by Democrats who wanted those bad loans to be made...for political gain.

What little detail the President did provide is not cause for celebration, but for alarm. He did not offer "Change;" he promised us more of the same old "tax and spend" Liberal policies which have failed us in the past.

TAX - "I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America."

SPEND - "We will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America."

SPEND - "Congress passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for eleven million American children whose parents work full-time."

SPEND - "invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives."

SPEND - "This budget...includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform – a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American."

SPEND - "we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal"

TAX - "We will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans." [He means those small businesses and investors who generate most of the jobs in America]

TAX - we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.

Yes, you read that right, President Obama is going to raise taxes in the middle of one of the worst recessions in our nation's history. That is precisely the wrong thing to do and most economists and even most of his Democrat allies know this.

President Obama is a master making promises but fails to explain how he plans to meet those promises. Instead he issued the same tired old promises of eliminating "waste fraud and abuse" saying:

"We have already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade."

I shudder to think what he and his little troop of bandits are calling "savings."

President Obama speaks Washington double-speak very well. During the debate over the stimulus bill, he castigated those who called the stimulus package a "spending package" by claiming that you need spending to stimulate the economy. He made fun of those who questioned his spending bill, yet he promised last night that:

"This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet."

But Mr. President, I thought we needed spending to stimulate the economy. Obviously the President only believes that government spending stimulates the economy...go figure.

No hope here folks. Last night the president made a wonderful speech full of glowing rhetoric, laden with bromides for public consumption, but with no substance. We will be forced to wait on the actual bill for any real information.

In the meantime, congress is considering another $400 billion spending bill which by accounts contains over 8000 earmarks...so much for "truthiness."

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Spending the stimulus

In the many debates about whether the federal stimulus bill will, indeed, stimulate the economy or merely increase government spending, there is agreement on one issue. To offer any stimulative effect to the increasing economic malaise, the spending needs to be swift and economically strategic.

Consider to whom this task of rapidly spending almost a trillion dollars of taxpayers' money goes: massive, chronically inefficient, and slow-moving federal bureaucracies. The scale of the purely administrative task is unprecedented. The entire plan hinges on unwieldy bureaucracies turning on a dime to approve contracts and grants.

Consider the scale of the challenge for only one agency: Department of Energy (DOE). This agency's total annual budget is now $25 billion. The portion of the stimulus bill going to DOE is $40 billion. Among federal agencies, DOE is known for exceptional delays and cost overruns. The Government Accounting Office has DOE on its "high risk" list for waste, fraud, and mismanagement. Most of DOE's current budget goes to oversight of the nation’s nuclear stockpile and research. Now it is to be a shrewd money manager.

The new Secretary of the Department, Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu, recognizes the stakes of DOE’s new challenge. He was recently quoted as saying its new role necessitates a radical transformation of the agency. "We've got to do it. Otherwise it's just going to be a bust," he recently commented. Not comforting!

Hell, in fact, will freeze over before huge government bureaucracies act quickly, decisively, and prudently as wise investors of taxpayers' money. Giving these bureaucracies billions with the directive to spend fast is a recipe for waste at best and fraud at worst, whereas tax reduction is immediately stimulative and requires no "assistance" from bureaucracies.

- Kathleen Hartnett White

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Chicago's Mayor "Big Brother" Daley

Will Malven
2/20/2009

Okay folks, now's the time to nip this in the bud. If you don't want President Barack "the Constitution's an Impediment" Obama to control every aspect of your lives, you've got to act now.

Mayor Daley has announced his intention to place a surveillance camera on every street corner of the city. The crime fighting potential for this proposal is far outweighed by the potential for abuse.

Now I can hear the jeers from the "If you don't have anything to hide, why should you worry?" crowd, however that question presupposes the innate good will of those controlling the cameras.

If your goal is to oppress the American people, what better way that placing a camera on every street corner to be watched and reported on by some faceless bureaucrat who may or may not have a personal vendetta against you, or simply may not like your face?

The people who are right now seeking to take control of our economy are the same people who would control these cameras. Well here is the Sun Times story:

Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says

PUBLIC SAFETY Goal is to have them on every corner

BY FRAN SPIELMAN
City Hall Reporter
February 19

Mayor Daley has argued that security and terrorism won’t be an issue if his Olympic dreams come true because, by 2016, there will be a surveillance camera on every street corner in Chicago.

But even before that blanket coverage begins, the “Big Brother’’ network is being put to better use.

Call takers and dispatchers now see real-time video if there is a surveillance cameras within 150 feet of a 911 call, thanks to a $6 million upgrade to the city’s “computer-aided dispatch” system.

When live video appears, call takers can pan, tilt and zoom those cameras to get the best possible view of a crime or disaster scene.

Just remember folks, cameras that can see every crime, can observe every conversation. How long do you think it will be before these cameras have microphones attached...for our own good, mind you...just so that police can hear the crime being committed...of course.

As T.S. Elliot so eloquently put it:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

These kinds of actions taken by our elected "representatives" exemplify what is meant by adages like "the thin end of the wedge" or "the camel's nose in the tent." Just as America is now engaged in a struggle against creeping socialism; it is engaged in a battle, of equal or greater import, against creeping oppression.

A man even wiser that T.S. Elliot, Edmund Burke issued an even direr warning:

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Folks now is the time in which "the good must associate." Those who believe in freedom, Liberty, and an American government as it was set out by our forefathers in the Constitution of The United States of America must now set out in clear opposition to actions such as Mayor Daley's.

Act now America before it is too late; before they begin hauling away people like Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter, who called for a new "Tea Party."

Ask those who lived behind the "Iron Curtain" for fifty years what it was like to have to watch your every word and action, to beware of every person around you, lest you be denounced-with or without cause-and thus be dragged off to some "Lubyanka" jail cell.

This is toward what we are moving inexorably and if we don't do something now, we will be there some time in the future asking ourselves "How did we get to this point?" Some of us are asking ourselves that very question now.

How did this nation, this Republic, manage to travel so far down the road of socialism and oppression? Why is there any such category in the statutes as "hate crimes?" What happened to the concepts of individual responsibility and individual freedom? When did this "sweet land of Liberty" become the "domain of the eternal victim?" How is it that the American people elected an unprepared, unqualified individual who believes that the Constitution acts as an "impediment" to, rather than an outline for, good government?

Well here we see just a bit of the explanation. Mayor Richard "Big Brother" Daley is pointing the way to oppressive government...for our own good...of course.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

What do you think?

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Post Apologizes...Sort of...Then Smacks Sharpton

Will Malven
2/20/2009

Well I knew they would never weather the storm being stirred up by Reverend Al "Tax Cheat" Sharpton, but the wording of the "apology" was pretty good.

First came the non-apology apology (this insincere practice has become so commonplace-usually by Democratic politicians-that people hardly notice anymore):

"...to those who were offended by the image, we apologize..."

Using that passive tense is always good, you automatically lay the blame on the person who was offended. Then came the zinger:

"However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else."

That means you Al-Baby! It's good to see the New York Post stand up to Sharptons' Stalinist tactics and attempted extortion. It's good to see Al Sharpton get slapped down. I hope the folks at the Post can continue to weather the storm.

Come on people! This guy is a self-admitted tax cheat. He has agree to pay the IRS $ millions in back taxes he and his "nonprofit organization," the National Action Network failed to pony up when it was owed.

Al Sharpton represents what is worst in American Liberal politics. He is a bottom feeding race pimp who feeds on the anger and misery of others. He stokes the flames of racial hatred for his personal prestige, power, and profit.

Even now Tax-Cheat Sharpton is trying to pressure the Post by proposing to

"challenge the waiver of News Corp in the City where they own several television stations and newspapers."

[from the pages of the National Action Network] It is Sharpton who should be protested and boycotted. By perpetuating the "victim" mentality among blacks, he and his ilk do far more damage to the American psyche and the African American community than any other individual or organization.

Bravo New York Post! I just wish you had not apologized in any way at all.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Reverend Al Sharpton Thinks African Americans are Chipanzees?

Will Malven
2/19/2009

Yesterday's New York Post [for the full sized cartoon follow the link and enter the date of the cartoon, Feb. 18th] featured the following political cartoon:

I would bet that the first reaction of most who saw that cartoon would be to relate the dead chimpanzee to Travis, the chimp that the NYPD was forced to kill yesterday after he ran amok, not President Barack Obama.

Reverend Al Sharpton, on the other hand, immediately reached the conclusion that the chimpanzee depicted must represent President Obama. Who knew he was such a racist?

It's odd that most people I know had no such reaction and drew no such parallel. I guess it takes a Liberal to be a true racist.

My initial reaction to the cartoon was to conclude that the cartoonist was implying that the "stimulus" bill was so inane that it could only have been written by an ape, possibly Travis (who, it was revealed, was capable of a fairly high level of rational thought...for an ape...well okay...for a Democrat).

I thought (and still think) it was a great commentary on the "stimulus" bill and the idiots who voted for it. It reminds me of those GEICO ads with the cavemen...

Announcer: "Such a stupid bill only a chimpanzee could have written it."

Any imputed racial overtones must come from intellectual baggage carried by those who still relate African Americans to apes...you know...people like Reverend Al Sharpton.

Most people are offended by that which they secretly fear to be true about themselves. No one secure in their own identity would be offended by this political cartoon or impute racial motives to a cartoonist that has shown no such tendencies in the past.

Only one who lacks any sense of self, or one who is so cynical that he is willing to use any opportunity for his own self aggrandizement...such as portraying himself as a "victim"...in order to gain as a result, would react as Reverend Al Sharpton has.

One would hope that Americans have moved past those old racial stereotypes; most Conservatives have, but once again we are shown how far Liberals have to go before they shed the old racism that has so characterized the Democrat party of the past.

The sad fact is that this is nothing more than another attempt by Al Sharpton to push his way into the spotlight that has been focused on President Obama and to divert the public's attention away from his increasingly severe tax evasion problems.

It's just as Ann Coulter has discussed in her newest book, GUILTY, Liberals love to use the "victim" card as a means to oppress others. Al Sharpton is portraying himself as a victim for his own gain. This is the same tactic that Reverend Jesse Jackson has used with much success to extort $millions from businesses across America by charging them with insensitivity to racial issues and threatening to boycott their businesses if they failed to pony up enough money...all in the name of "racial harmony" of course. The money always goes to some charity...like...say...umm...ah! Jesse Jackson's own personal charity, the RainbowPush Coalition for example.

I hope the owners of the New York Post have the guts to thumb their collective noses at Sharpton, but if history is any teacher, they will cave in eventually. Too bad. It was a clever cartoon...a little too insensitive to me considering that the chimpanzee story was a tragedy...but still, it was clever and Sean Delonas is a good political cartoonist. I guess he'll get fired now.

Too bad Liberals don't believe in our Constitution or our Bill of Rights. They seem bound and determined to stifle all speech and press opposed to their agenda. Remember President Obama believes our Constitution to be an "impediment," rather than the greatest governmental document ever written.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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TPPF’s Guenthner honored with 2009 Texas Social Media Award

Austin American-Statesman selects Guenthner as one of the top 25 social media users in Texas

AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation is pleased to announce that David Guenthner, its Director for Media and Government Relations, has been selected as one of the inaugural recipients of the Texas Social Media Awards.

"Communication technologies and techniques are changing rapidly," said Justin Keener, the Foundation’s Vice President of Policy and Communications. "David has done a great job of finding new tools and incorporating them into our outreach programs so that we can share our message with more people. We are thrilled that he has received this well-deserved recognition."

Guenthner is the host and producer of "Texas PolicyCast," the Foundation’s weekly podcast. Texas PolicyCast was downloaded more than 220,000 times last year. He manages the Foundation’s "Speaking Freely" blog and is a contributor at HoustonConservative.com.

During the last several months, Guenthner has developed new programs for online reputation management and blog outreach and overseen the development of the Foundation’s Facebook page. He has actively promoted the Foundation’s research through Twitter and provided tutorials for legislators, activists, and other opinion leaders on how to use the service.

"For 20 years, the free-market movement has looked to the Texas Public Policy Foundation for leadership on the key public policy issues affecting our state and nation," Keener said. "David has played a key role in delivering our message across Texas and the nation, predicting and responding to the evolution in how people gather and share information, and this award validates his contribution and effectiveness."

The Texas Social Media Awards are sponsored by the Austin American-Statesman. A panel at the American-Statesman selected the 25 winners from 125 nominees submitted by the readers of Statesman.com. Guenthner will receive his award at a March 15th award ceremony.

David Guenthner is Director of Media and Government Relations for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan, free-market research institute based in Austin. More information can be found on the Foundation’s primary website, www.TexasPolicy.com, or its government spending transparency website, www.TexasBudgetSource.com.

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Fairness Doctrine Now? Ask Yourself Why

Will Malven
2/16/2009

Isn't it odd that the cynically named Fairness Doctrine has suddenly made a reappearance over the past year? A casual observer might be inclined to think that, given the results of the 2008 elections, Liberals wouldn't need to be concerned with Conservative Talk Radio (CTR)...and let's be truthful...CTR is what the "Fairness Doctrine" is all about.

Democrats have substantial majorities in both Houses of Congress and they Hold the Presidency. With the three RINO Republicans (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Spector) in the Senate they have a virtually filibuster proof majority. They can pass anything they want and Republicans can do nothing to stop them.

Democrats and Liberals achieved all of this in spite of everything CTR could do to prevent it. So...like what is this all about...power maybe? Absolute power? I mean, I see that President "Barry Soetoro" Obama's good buddy Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, has just managed win a referendum that will allow him virtually to become a dictator by eliminating term limits and thus allowing him to be reelected as long as he so desires, is this what Democrats are working towards?

Rep. José Serrano (D-NY) already has introduced HJ Res 5 calling for the repeal of the 22nd Amendment which limits an individual to serving two terms as President. I'm sorry, but I wasn't born yesterday. I find this simply too convenient to be a coincidence, especially since it has always been those on the Left who have sought absolute power.

Actually this pursuit of the "Fairness Doctrine" is not unexpected; Democrats control all of the alphabet news networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC) and most of the print media in the larger cities (including all of the most influential newspapers).

The first step towards totalitarianism is silencing the voices of all who oppose those in power. He, who controls the messengers, controls the message. The effort to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine" or "enforced media accountability' as they are calling it now, is an effort to control the message. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out during Friday's program Obama's idol, Karl Marx, defined peace as "the absense of opposition to socialism."

The "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" is all about socialism. President Obama was raised by Marxists and is steeped in Marxist ideals. Neocon Latina has compiled a pretty thorough dossier on this aspect of his background. Every item in his agenda and his world view is intended to further political globalism and socialism within the United States. Every item is intended to strengthen the role of government in our lives.

Of course the is a more mercenary answer for the question I posed; Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) appeared on Liberal talk show host Bill Press' program arguing for "balance" in talk radio - ironic that she should make this call for a "fairness doctrine" on a successful Liberal talk show - and she just happens to be married to the Vice President of Liberal talk show network Air America. Perhaps she has a more personal and vested interest in promoting more Liberal talk shows. This however is merely an anomaly. Liberals genuinely wish to increase their control over the message.

The Constitution (I know, I know, Liberals think the Constitution is merely an impediment) expressly forbids the sort of legislation Liberals in Congress are currently contemplating. The First Amendment very clearly states that:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free practice thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." [Emphasis added]

Now, of course, as Rush Limbaugh also pointed out, these same Liberal/Democrats will make the claim that talk radio is entertainment and not genuine journalism and thus doesn't qualify as "the press," but this is a specious argument and thus based on a half truth.

CTR serves both as a source of entertainment and a source of genuine hard news and editorial opinion. Thus, as a source of both hard news and editorial opinion, CTR very easily falls under the broad category of "the press." Democrats know this just as they know that what they are doing is intellectually dishonest and cynical at best; malevolent and unconstitutional at worst.

At the core of the Democrats' arguments lies an ugly truth; they don't believe in the free market model not in the private business sector and absolutely not in the market of ideals. They don't trust the American people to make good decisions and believe that most Americans...including the people reading this editorial...are uninformed rubes who don't know what is good for them.

The explanation of that mistrust is fairly simple to discern (as they tend to be rather transparent and simple people). They believe that their ideals are the only legitimate ideals. They believe that if you don't agree with their ideals, you have to be ignorant of the "truth" or genuinely evil. So when they see their ideal being rejected in the free market, the only possible conclusion for them to reach is that you are incapable or unwilling to understand that they are "right."

So they are faced with the necessity of force feeding the citizens (that's you) what they "know" to be the "truth." If you don't agree then, their ideology requires them to take power and institute their governmental paradigm without regard to your will...for your own good.

This arrogance and certitude of being "right" and owning the truth is a frightening belief and leads ultimately to the type of regimes the world saw under Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. These two regimes took the concept of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" to such extremes that the world cannot afford a return of such a philosophy.

Our Constitution balances two contradictory concepts, that of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" (as exemplified in the concept of "one man, one vote" and as is present in the per capita representation in the House of Representatives) and its mirrored concept, "the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many" (as exemplified in the equal representation of states, regardless of population, as is present in the Senate).

Our forefathers understood that there needs to be a balance between those two, sometimes conflicting, concepts. It is this balance that the "Fairness Doctrine," in whatever guise it comes and under whatever name it is presented, seeks to undermine. By silencing all decent, government's power threatens to become repressive and unchallenged. The citizen becomes a vassal of the state rather than its sovereign.

Always remember, in America the government governs with the consent of the governed, not the other way around. Democrats now seek to overturn this tradition and supplant this tried and true model for the failed old concepts which other nations of the world have pursued; always to their detriment.

Ours is a unique and superior system and it has created a nation which has been the envy of the world...the most prosperous economy, the most powerful political and military force the world has ever seen, and this force has always been used for the good of others, never for conquest. American has sacrificed (and still does so) more of its national treasure both in lives and in money in support of other's freedom and safety than any nation in history.

This new push for a redefined, relabeled "Fairness Doctrine" is nothing more than a cynical and dishonest grab for power by those on the Left. It is an attempt to silence the most influential Conservative voices in America so that the "Big Lie" or "Große Lüge" (Buying Democrat Lies; Time for the American People to Take Stock) may be told with impunity.

At all costs this deceptive and egregious effort to codify governmental censorship, under whatever euphemistic name Democrats attempt to get it passed, must be stopped.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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"Urgent?" Spending Bill on Hold for Obama Holiday

Will Malven
2/16/2009

Apparently I'm not the only one wondering why, given the "urgency" of getting the so-called Stimulus Package passed, Obama then takes a three-day holiday outing to Chicago and will not sign the bill until tomorrow during a trip to Colorado. Weren't all of the Democrat Leadership just telling us ad nauseum:

"No time to read the bill, this is urgent just pass it. No time for debate over the bill, or even to allow negotiations, you don't need to understand what is in it, the economy may collapse any second, just pass it...just trust us."

Good grief! With the rhetoric coming from the Democrats in Congress and from the White House, I would have thought that President Obama was sitting waiting with pen in hand as couriers braved the traffic to rush this "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" to him so he could sign it into law.

Yet here we sit, three days later, Madam[n]e Speaker "Bela" Pelosi has flitted off to Italy, and President "Empty Suit" Obama went to Chicago for a nice holiday weekend. Meanwhile one has to wonder if perhaps these three days might not have been better spent allowing Congress members to read what they were voting on. I suspect the three RINO idiots are feeling even dumber than usual having been railroaded into supporting a bill, under the lie of urgency, without even reading it.

WHAT'S THE RUSH?
'URGENT' $TIMULUS ON HOLD FOR BAM'S WEEKEND OFF

By BRENDAN SCOTT IN ALBANY and ANA MARIA ALAYA IN NY, AP

Last updated: 2:32 am
February 15, 2009
Posted: 2:17 am
February 15, 2009

After pushing Congress for weeks to hurry up and pass the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway.

Obama arrived at his home in Chicago on Friday, and treated wife Michelle to a Valentine's Day dinner downtown last night. The couple was spotted leaving upscale Table Fifty-Two, which specializes in Southern cuisine, with the first lady toting what appeared to be a doggie bag.

The president plans to spend the Presidents' Day weekend in the Windy City, and is not expected to sign the bill until Tuesday, when he travels to Denver to discuss his economic plan.

I guess the only thing "urgent" about this package was the urgent need for these Marxists to avoid scrutiny as they push their wish list of Liberal spending and agenda items through Congress before the people are able to understand what it is they are doing to us.

Senator Susan "Burgers" Collins told us that:

"The American people want us to work together...to solve this 'dire' crisis."

Senator, I suspect the American people would be even more appreciative if you had taken the time to read the actual bill on which you voted.

Furthermore, if the crisis was and is so dire, wouldn't it have been better for you Congressional leeches to remain in Washington and do your jobs than rushing to get anything you could get passed so that you could go on your "hard[ly] earned President's Day holiday?

My complaint isn't like Liberals complaints about President Bush's number of days off; the President of the United States is never out of reach, he is never "on holiday" meaning that the worries and problems of running the nation are ever present. In the event of a "crisis" (I mean a genuinely urgent crisis, not some matter of policy and budgeting), the President has everything he needs within his reach to deal with it.

My complaint is far deeper than the superficialities of the President's physical location, it has to do with his using every device within his power to get a $1.3 trillion spending bill passed without even allowing Congress members time to read the bill due to the "urgency" of its passing, then waiting three days for a political rally before he signs it.

This really goes to the unbelievable, but not unexpected, cynicism of Liberals in claiming urgency for political gain. Lying to the American people will work for Democrats and President Obama for a while, but this cynical action will eventually catch up with them...the "worm will turn."

Meanwhile, according to his own claims of "urgency," Rome burns while this Nero fiddles.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Collins Replies to a Maine Resident-Blah, Blah, Blah

Will Malven
2/13/2009

I heard from a reader who resides in Maine and borrowed my open letter to Senators Collins (RINO-MD), Snowe (RINO-ME), and Specter (RINO-PA) to send to his (not so) esteemed Senators.

Following is the response he received from Senator Collins, who was taking time off from her real occupation as Chief Burger Flipper, "CBF," for McDonalds (I really shouldn't insult the workers at McDonalds, they are a cut above Senator Collins' intellect and competence).

Dear Mr. XXXXXXXX:

Thank you for contacting me with your views regarding the economic stimulus package. I appreciate your taking the time to do so.

Our nation is in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis. We have witnessed the collapse of the housing market, the unraveling of our nation's financial institutions, and the evaporation of trillions of dollars that have been invested in the stock market and other retirement and investment funds. I have heard from far too many Mainers who have had to delay their retirement plans because they no longer have the nest egg for which they worked so hard.

Every day, we hear more reports of massive job losses in communities all across America, and Maine is no exception. Our state's unemployment rate has risen to seven percent, the highest level in 16 years.

I agree with many economists that it is critical that Congress pass an economic stimulus bill to boost the economy and create jobs. Earlier versions of the House and Senate economic stimulus bills were, however, far too expensive and bloated. These versions also included too many provisions that may well be worthwhile, but are more appropriately funded in a regular appropriations bill. That is why I joined with Senator Ben Nelson
(D-NE) and a group of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including Senator Olympia Snowe, to craft a compromise bill. As a result of our hard work and weeks of negotiations, a group of Democrats and Republicans working together were able to reach a compromise on a more fiscally responsible economic stimulus plan that will cost $100 billion less than previous versions considered by the House and Senate.

While this bill is by no means perfect, it will go a long way toward creating jobs and addressing the dire economic challenges faced by our nation.

It is estimated that this bill will create or save 3.5 million jobs in Maine and nationwide over the next two years. Much of this bill will fund transportation, energy and other infrastructure projects that will result in job creation. It includes a temporary increase in federal Medicaid dollars, which will bring $470 million for Maine over the next 27 months. And it provides a significant funding increase for the Pell Grant program, special education funding, and a State Stabilization fund to help states deal with their serious budget shortfalls.

The bill also includes crucial tax relief for low and middle-income families, tax incentives for small businesses, and an increase in safety net programs, as well as funding for energy efficiency and alternative energy development programs.

Given the substantial investment the federal government is making in this stimulus, it is critical that the taxpayers' money be spent properly. It is for this reason I have pushed throughout the negotiations for measures to ensure the money is wisely spent, including additional funding for agency Inspectors General, the Government Accountability Office, and the creation of a "Recovery Act Transparency Board." As Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I, along with the Committee's Chairman will soon hold the first Committee hearing on safeguards to protect against waste, fraud, and mismanagement and to ensure accountability and transparency.

Again, thank you for contacting me. This bill will go a long way toward creating jobs and addressing the dire economic crisis faced by our nation.


Sincerely,

Susan M. Collins

United States Senator

She left off the part about being Chief Burger Flipper (probably didn't want to brag).

Man, talk about being out of touch with your voters; she didn't even have two form letters; you know, one to send to those two or three citizens who support the bill's passage and another to send to those tens of thousands who opposed its passage.

One would have thought that she would have at least acknowledged the fact that he was telling her to vote against the "spendulous" bill. The arrogance and self-satisfied attitude (or is that self-justification I detect) evinced in the letter exudes that special smugness that only Liberals like her possess.

I feel sorry for this individual because the permanent CBF (kind of like Andy Griffith's "PLO" (Permanent Latrine Orderly) in No Time for Sargeants) just got reelected and won't be up again for six years. He's stuck with RINO incompetence.

Take heart fellow Conservatives, what comes around, goes around and after four years of Jimmy Carter Redux under President "Barry Soetoro" Obama, Americans will once more be ready for a return to reality and Conservative values. It's just that the road back will be longer and more difficult because the nation will be in much worse shape than it was after Carter.

In the meantime, we must, as Chief Dan George said in Outlaw Josey Wales, "Endeavor to persevere."

I wish to thank my reader in Maine for forwarding this letter from Senator "Burgers" Collins so that I could share it with everyone.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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The Obama Administration: Jimmy Carter Redux...on Steroids

Will Malven
2/13/2009

With President Obama, the comparisons to the failed Presidency of Jimmy Carter are becoming easier and easier. I have made that comparison many times, even when struggling to find something optimistic and positive to say about our new President as in this editorial, Obama Set to Disappoint Extreme Left.

Unfortunately in my past few editorials about the Obama Administration (including the one linked to above), I have underestimated our new President's dedication to the Marxist ideals which characterized and pervaded his upbringing. President Obama's move to the Left has been Mercurial and resolute. He is rapidly demonstrating that my original estimate of his politics was correct...he is a dedicated Marxist who believes that all answers to our problems can be best solved by the state, not the private sector.

What is now becoming increasingly clear about the Obama Administration as it begins to take shape is it's frighteningly similar appearance to that of President "Malaise" Carter's.

The single greatest contributor to the Carter Administration was President Carter's arrogance. Like most Liberal elitists, Carter believed himself to be the smartest person in the room. He believed that he needed to be involved in every decision coming out of his administration. Obama exudes that same arrogance.

Carter was a "micro-manager" and as a result, every policy coming out of his White House had to have his personal imprimatur stamped on it. Carter was constitutionally incapable of delegating responsibility. This kind of micromanagement is based on mistrust and arrogance; mistrust of his chosen advisors and appointees, and arrogance that only he was capable of making important decisions.

This same paradigm is now beginning to take shape inside the Obama White House. With President Obama's closest advisors being granted extra-constitutional powers which exceed those of his cabinet appointees. These extra-constitutional power brokers, which he has labeled czars, do not bear the Congressional stamp of approval the way that Cabinet Secretaries do. Thus the White House will more resemble a monarchy than a republican presidency.

Karl Rove, "The Architect," has written an excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal which appeared yesterday, in which he describes the mess which is beginning to metastasize within the West Wing of the White House.

The Obama White House May Be a Crowded Mess
There will be four people in my old office

Wall Street Journal/Opinion Journal
JANUARY 28, 2009, 11:25 P.M. ET

By KARL ROVE

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama criticized Washington for being "obsessed with
the perpetual campaign." As president he is the first occupant of the Oval Office to give his director of political affairs -- who coordinates the president's involvement with his party and other campaign related activities -- an office in the West Wing.

Many Americans may assume that the president's entire staff is in the West Wing. It's not. The West Wing is actually a very small place, so the vast number of people who work "at the White House" actually have offices across the street at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB).

Under Mr. Obama, the political director won't be in the EEOB, where other presidents have placed him. He'll occupy a West Wing office usually given to the head of presidential personnel. That's a sign of the importance of politics for Team Obama.

This is one of many of Mr. Obama's changes to the management structure of the White House that will likely undermine his stated aims and create a more centralized and possibly incoherent policy process.

Rove goes on to describe how every move Obama is making further centralizes power in the White House and away from the agencies which normally execute policy and make most policy decisions-always with White House approval, of course.

President Obama is setting himself up to micromanage our government just as President Jimmy Carter did. He will get precisely the same results Carter got...a dismal failure.

This monarchical presidency paradigm will be combined with President Obama's Marxist economic policies like his $800 billion "stimulus" package (read spending bill) will result in a prolonged recession, double digit unemployment, double digit inflation, and eventually double digit interest rates.

As soon as this monstrosity of a spending bill hits the markets with its full impact, inflation will start in earnest as the government is forced to print fiat money to cover the spending.

With China nearing its own economic disaster, it will cease to buy our debt; Japan already in its own economic crisis, and Great (or used to be Great) Britain in an economic downturn equal to or surpassing our own, there will be no buyers for the treasury bills congress Democrats intended to use to finance this boondoggle. As a result of these markets for our debt drying up, the only alternative for our government is printing money.

As to Carter's foreign policy failures, they were legion: the Panama Canal fiasco, the Iranian hostage fiasco, his complicity in the deposition of the Shah of Iran (a strong American ally) and the ascension of Ayatollah Khomeini (directly leading to the Iranian Islamic Republic), the failed rescue attempt of the American hostages in Iran, his resolute dislike for Israel, his support of the Sandinista Revolutionaries and opposition to the Contras; the list is impressive.

Even his most touted accomplishment, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed at Camp David in 1979, was accomplished in spite of his efforts (Carter only wanted an agreement that included all of the nations hostile toward Israel and opposed the efforts of Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, only jumping in at the last moment to grab some of the glory).

Obama has made a great start in duplicating Carter's failures with his closing of Gitmo (Guantanamo), his insistence on using the Army Field Manual as the definitive instruction for the interrogation of prisoners, the end of rendition, his insistence on ending the war in Iraq in 16 months, giving his first press interview with El Arabia, his overtures of talks without preconditions with Iran; it has been an inauspicious beginning. Right up Carter's alley.

The real source of this kind of arrogance is always insecurity and ignorance and Obama, like Carter, has them both in spades

Get ready for Carter redux...on steroids.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Openness and Transparency Take On New Meaning Under Obama

Will Malven
2/13/2009

As usual with Democrats, "up" is "down" and "black" is "white."

All through his campaign and at the beginning his term as President, Barack Obama has continually promised a new era in American politics. Gone was to be the backroom deals and bills marked up in the dark of night. Everything was to be done in the open under the disinfectant of sunlight.

The new buzz words, offered up as promises from the new administration, were "openness" and "transparency." The "corruption" of prior administrations was to fall under these new tenets of the Administration of "Hope" and "Change."

Well, where I come from a man is known not by his words, but his deeds and so far, President Obama's deeds fall far short of his rosy rhetoric.

He pledged that there would be no corruption...he has had four of his nominees, so far, who appear to have difficulty in paying their taxes on time...or at all.

He pledged that under his administration lobbyists would not be allowed to work for agencies they've lobbied in the last two years, yet he has been forced to sign repeated waivers. Politico lists 12 lobbyists in the "no lobbyists" Obama Administration:

Eric Holder, attorney general nominee, was registered to lobby until 2004 on behalf of clients including Global Crossing, a bankrupt telecommunications firm.

Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year on behalf of the National Education Association.

William Lynn, deputy defense secretary nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for defense contractor Raytheon, where he was a top executive.

William Corr, deputy health and human services secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until last year for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-profit that pushes to limit tobacco use.

David Hayes, deputy interior secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until 2006 for clients, including the regional utility San Diego Gas & Electric.

Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for financial giant Goldman Sachs.

Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, was registered to lobby until 2005 for clients, including the Coalition for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways, Airborne Express and drug-maker ImClone.

Mona Sutphen, deputy White House chief of staff, was registered to lobby for clients, including Angliss International in 2003.

Melody Barnes, domestic policy council director, lobbied in 2003 and 2004 for liberal advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Constitution Society and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Cecilia Munoz, White House director of intergovernmental affairs, was a lobbyist as recently as last year for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group.

Patrick Gaspard, White House political affairs director, was a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union.

Michael Strautmanis, chief of staff to the president’s assistant for intergovernmental relations, lobbied for the American Association of Justice from 2001 until 2005.

When ones actions fail to meet his words, he is a liar. Of course this is only the tip of the iceberg. If you really want to see the hypocrisy of this President you only need to look to the soon to be passed into law, "stimulus" bill.

This nightmare of a pork bill is scheduled for a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives at 9:00AM today. Members agree that the bill would be posted on the internet for 48 hours prior to the vote...the bill was finally made available at 10:00PM last night. This bill is now 1,071 pages long.

No one knows what all is in this bill except those who wrote it and they didn't finish writing it until last night. This is basically writing a blank check to the Democrat Party and their President.

One Democrat has come forward and spoken the truth, Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). From CNSNews.com:

Democratic Senator Predicts None of His Colleagues 'Will Have the Chance' to Read Final Stimulus Bill Before Vote

Friday, February 13, 2009
By Ryan Byrnes and Edwin Mora

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would "have the chance" to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress.

“No, I don’t think anyone will have the chance to [read the entire bill],” Lautenberg told CNSNews.com.

The final bill, crafted by a House-Senate conference committee, was posted on the Website of the House Appropriations Committe [sic] late Thurday [sic] in two PDF files.

The first PDF was 424 pages long and the second PDF was 575 pages long, making the total bill 999 pages long. The House is expected to vote on this 999-page bill Friday, and the Senate either later Friday or Saturday. [Editor's note: The first PDF, as posted on the House Appropriations Committee website as of 8:20 AM Friday morning, had grown by 72 pages to 496 pages, increasing the length of the total document to 1,071 pages.]

Woops looks like I was wrong, the bill was not posted last night, it was posted at 8:20AM. Vote on the passage of this abomination will occur today and inspite of massive opposition to this bill by those who are more concerned about the wasting of tax-payer money.

Democrats have the votes and have decided to grant another waiver...this time breaking their own House rules to force a vote without giving the American people the 48 hours they promised us we would have to examine the bill.

Pay attention people! Democrats don't care about you. They don't want you to read this bill because they know that the more you learn about it the greater your opposition to it will be. This is governing without the consent of the governed.

This bill will not create very many jobs; it will not help the average person looking for work; it is a political document intended to pass through as many Democrat agenda items as possible without allowing the to be scrutinized by the voters, the press (what few actually care how badly Americans are being served/screwed, or even the congressmen and women who are casting their votes.

That's right folks...your Democrat Congress is voting on a bill and they don't even know what all is in it.

Remember this contempt for your opinions and wishes in 2010. Despots are now in control of your government and they do not believe in following the rules they themselves brought into being last month. I hope that we will still be allowed to vote in 2010. Right now it's looking pretty iffy.

Think about it people; if they have such contempt for their own word and rules, how can you ever trust them or anything they may promise you in the future? This is the most blatant case of Liberals lying I have ever witnessed...it is much more reminiscent of the Soviet Union than America.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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TPPF COMMENTARY: Don’t Strangle a Patient on Life Support

By Kathleen Hartnett White

After providing more than $30 billion of taxpayer money to save U.S. automakers from bankruptcy, new federal powers have not wasted time before complicating the U.S. auto industry’s return to profitability.

Among his first moves, President Barack Obama directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider California’s request to establish state-only greenhouse gas (ghg) standards for car and truck emissions. This translates to yet more new engine standards for Detroit.

The Bush Administration denied requests from California and 13 other states because federal law makes mobile sources (e.g., tailpipe emission standards) an exclusively federal authority unless an exceptional waiver is granted. A patchwork of different state engine standards is a nightmare for U.S. automakers and interstate commerce.

Tailpipe ghg emission standards are, in effect, fuel efficiency standards. Existing federal law, indeed, requires a stricter Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standard (CAFE) of 35 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2020. Automakers comply with such CAFE standards by calculating an average mileage among different models of in their fleet. California’s standards go farther and faster than the federal standards: 35 mpg by 2016, with mileage as high as 43 mpg for cars and 27 mpg for sport utility vehicles and heavier trucks.

The fuel economy standards imposed by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) and low-emission vehicle (LEV) standards imposed by EPA are intertwined, complex, and misleading. EPA’s existing LEV standards restrict emissions of conventional pollutants like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The standards address engine design in the most elaborate system of tiers, bins, and multiple categories like Inherently Low, Ultra-low, Super Ultra-low and Partial Low Emission Vehicles. Complicated indeed!

Enacted in 2006, California’s global warming law included tailpipe standards to reduce CO2. A most ubiquitous byproduct of nature and human activity, CO2 is wholly unlike the pollutants regulated under EPA’s LEV standards. Tailpipe emissions of NOx, for example, can be reduced by developing engines that burn gasoline more efficiently. CO2 and water vapor, on the other hand, are the ultimate by-products of burning gasoline and thus proportionate to the amount of fuel used. The only way to reduce CO2 from a vehicle’s exhaust is to increase fuel efficiency.

The cleaner-burning engines flowing from EPA LEV standards are coming on line now in new cars and trucks. They have and will continue to improve air quality in Texas cities through 2012. Unrealistic deadlines and standards, however, will not only challenge the bottom line in Detroit but will hurt all consumers. If the standards become too strict, too fast, government will effectively dictate vehicle design, size and type. Consumers will pay higher prices and have fewer choices.

Boutique LEV standards and accelerated new CAFE standards may sap the last breath from frail U.S. automakers. As syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer noted, imposing new green auto standards on U.S. automakers, at this point in time, is like the government strangling a patient to whom it administers oxygen.

Texans should pay attention. Bills filed in the Texas Legislature include SB 119, The Texas Low-Emission Vehicle Act, requiring a Texas program consistent with California’s LEV program. Since 2007, when the Golden State’s new CO2 mandates took shape, California has led the nation in job loss -- its most recent unemployment rate was 9.3 percent. The prosperous “green” economy and new green jobs, promised by the advocates of California’s climate change law, have not emerged; but the exorbitant cost of low-carbon California has. Instead of a “net positive effect on California economic growth through 2020,” as concluded in a study by the California Air Resources Board, Californians are reeling from the impact of $23 billion in new taxes, fees, and higher power costs required by their state’s low-carbon law.

To date, Texas has avoided the economic woes of California by avoiding high taxes, excessive regulation, and overspending. Texans would be wise to question the California example of state-only tailpipe standards and state carbon mandates.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. White is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Texas PolicyCast: A blueprint for an effective state budget

On Wednesday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation joined with several other research, business and taxpayer organizations to issue "Blueprint for an Effective State Budget," a statement intended to guide legislators through the difficult budget decisions they will have to make during the next few months. This week, we discuss the blueprint with one of its primary architects, The Honorable Talmadge Heflin, Director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and former Chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee.

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Democrats-Obama Asking FBI to Retask Agents from Counter-Terrorism to Bank Fraud

Will Malven
2/11/2009

Are they kidding me?

This story comes from News Channel 8 in Washington DC:

FBI may shift counterterror agents to anti-fraud

posted 02/11/09 6:48 pm
Written By DEVLIN BARRETT

Washington - With thousands of fraud investigations under way, the FBI (web) is considering shifting agents away from counterterrorism work to help sort through the wreckage of the financial meltdown. FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the bureau may reassign some of the positions that were reallocated to anti-terrorism work after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Such a move would be a further sign of the government breaking with the Bush administration's priorities, which pledged to assign every available resource to averting another terrorist attack.

Pistole told Congress his investigators have 530 active corporate fraud investigations, and 38 of them involve some of the biggest names in corporate finance - cases directly related to the current crisis.

Senator Patrick "Leaky" Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been urging the FBI to put those guilty of committing mortgage fraud behind bars. Now I'm all for putting criminals behind bars, but really Senator Leahy are you quite sure you have your priorities straight? Mortgage fraud may be a serious crime, but preventing terrorists from killing several thousand American citizens might be slightly more important that your little Liberal anticapitalism crusade.

Liberals have never really believed in the war against terrorism. Just as they proved during the Clinton Administration, Democrats view terrorism as a subject for criminal investigation. That is one reason that they were so determined in their fight against every action taken by the Bush Administration to combat terrorism abroad as well as here at home (the other reason was, of course, partisanship and Democrats' lust for power at any cost).

Democrat's failure to take the threat of terrorism seriously is the reason that President Bill Clinton failed to act on the three occasions he was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter by the Sudanese government. It is the reason that very little was done to combat terrorism by the Clinton Administration following the first World Trade Center bombing back in 1993, the reason that very little was done by President Clinton following the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the devastating attack against the USS Cole, and it was the reason that the Clinton Administration failed to take the legislative action necessary to ease the ability of FBI and CIA agents to communicate with each other (in actuality, with the concerted efforts of then Deputy Attorney General Jaime Gorelick they made it worse).

Of course the best indicator of Democrat cluelessness as to the threat that terrorism posed during the Clinton Administration is President Clinton's repeated refusals to take Osama bin Ladin when the Sudan offered him up on a silver platter.

Democrats have never since WWII shown any ability whatsoever to defend our nation in any meaningful way (well...okay...LBJ did show more moxie than any Liberal since then in escalating the war in Vietnam and he deserves kudos for that effort, but then he bailed on the whole deal in the face of determined political resistance from within his own party).

It is possible that this shift will not happen, particularly if enough people apply political pressure on the Obama Administration to prevent it from happening, but given the Democrats' propensity for underestimating the importance of combating terrorism, don't be surprised when it happens.

To my knowledge, terrorists have not altered their expressed desire to attack America, kill American civilians, or destroy "the great Satan." A simple change of administration here in America and a softer tone from Obama's White House towards those who wish to destroy us is unlikely to alter that attitude.

Prepare to witness another terrorist attack here on our own soil; given Obama's actions so far, it is more than likely to occur.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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President Obama: Breaking Promises One at a Time

Yet another lie from President Obama.

This promise is from Change.Gov, Obama's official "Office of the President Elect" web page. File it under "another broken promise-another Democrat lie:

The Obama-Biden Plan

"Shine the Light on Washington Lobbying

End the Practice of Writing Legislation Behind Closed Doors: As president, Barack Obama will restore the American people's trust in their government by making government more open and transparent. Obama will work to reform congressional rules to require all legislative sessions, including committee mark-ups and conference committees, to be conducted in public. By making these practices public, the American people will be able to hold their leaders accountable for wasteful spending and lawmakers won't be able to slip favors for lobbyists into bills at the last minute.

President elect Obama promised to end the process of backroom bill writing, yet Human events reports that the Democrats held a midnight "stimulus" package writing session in an effort to shut Republicans out of the process:

Republicans Shut Out of Stimulus Conference Negotiations

by Connie Hair
02/11/2009

Republicans have caught the Democrats in a midnight “stimulus” power play that seeks to cut Republican conferees out of the House-Senate negotiations to resolve a final version of the Obama “stimulus” package. Staff members from the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met last night to put together the “stimulus” conference report.

They intend to attempt to shove this $1.3 trillion spending bill through in the dead of the night without Republican input so floor action can take place in both chambers on Thursday.

I spoke with House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) moments ago about this latest version of Democratic “bipartisanship.” Pence told me, “I think the American people deserve to know that legislation that would comprise an amount equal to the entire discretionary budget of the United States of America is being crafted without a single House Republican in the room.”

Oh, they invited the RINO's who voted with them to the meeting, just none of the Republicans who stand for Republican ideals and limited spending of government funds.

Here are two more broken "promises" from the Obama website:

Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.

Shine Light on Earmarks and Pork Barrel Spending: Obama's Transparency and Integrity in Earmarks Act will shed light on all earmarks by disclosing the name of the legislator who asked for each earmark, along with a written justification, 72 hours before they can be approved by the full Senate.

Of course Obama will claim, in the case of the "Sunlight Before Signing" promise, that this qualifies as an emergency. He has already redefined "ear-marks" as requests for spending added to a bill at the last minute, thus removing 100% of the pork-barrel spending included in this "stimulus" bill from being so classified.

This guy parses his words as carefully as former President William Jefferson "Billy Blue Dress" Clinton. I wonder how long it will be before we hear something about it all depending on what the meaning of "is" is...at this rate, not very long.

I'm certain that we will quickly be told how Republicans are lying about being excluded from the process because Arlen Specter (RINO-PA), Susan Collins (RINO-ME) and Olympia Snowe (RINO-ME) were present.

This process continues to be the most dictatorial and cynical in recent memory...certainly since the Carter era when Democrats had an even greater advantage in Congress. The results of those years brought us the Islamic State of Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the loss of the Panama Canal Zone, the complete emasculation of our military, and rendered our national intelligence apparatuses virtually useless.

It took us twenty years to undo the damage they did under Carter and some of it was irreparable. We are only three weeks into this administration and Obama is already set to have the government take over the lion's share of our economy, "for our own good," mind you.

Due to his Presidential edicts, the nation is already at greater risk from terrorist attacks and is more alienated from our Western European allies and Israel. On the bright side, Hamas loves Obama as do Iran, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah, all three well know lovers of American culture and the concepts of Liberty and freedom we used to espouse.

Hey, what're a few thousand more American deaths if we can be will regarded by the totalitarian Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East? At least President Obama can say he was "very polite" to our enemies.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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President Obama: The Most Scripted President in History

Anyone watching President Obama's first "press conference" Monday night had to have been struck by one overriding fact, every reporter on whom he called was prescreened and on a list taped to the podium from which he read their names.

Can you imagine what the press would have said if former President Bush had held a press conference in which every reporter on which he called had been prescreened by his staff? Imagine the outrage. Imagine the snide remarks about "not being up to the job."

Instead, we have been subjected to fawning praise about how well his first press conference went; what a magnificent communicator he is.

We Conservatives have been talking about how inept Candidate-now President-Obama was when he went off script. Far from the studied eloquence he evinced in his pre-written speeches, his off the cuff remarks were always peppered by stuttering, pauses and a lot of hemming and hawing as he struggled to find suitable words and evaded providing any specifics in his answers.

I was immediately struck by his carefully scripted performance Monday night. No reporters were allowed to raise their hands to ask questions, there was none of the free and off handed give and take we witnessed not only with former President Bush, but with every single president we have had since press conferences became de rigueur for sitting presidents.

Say what you will about former President Bush, he never shied away from calling on reporters with no prior knowledge of what questions they might ask even during the toughest periods of his presidency. With the exception of that nasty little troglodyte Helen Thomas, who made her hatred of and contempt for President Bush public when she spoke at Bartos Theater at MIT in November of 2002, president Bush never shied away from any reporter or any question barring those which might compromise national security.

Barack Obama is a very different type of president, eschewing any venue which might tax his very limited ability to speak extemporaneously. Remember those ten town hall meeting he and John McCain held during the last election...oh yeah they didn't happen, after promising to participate, Obama backed out.

Why do I consider this important? It further illustrates how completely unprepared and ill-equipped Barack Hussein Obama is for the office he now occupies. How is it possible for this administration and this President to be so unprepared to deal with the problems that face this nation?

Barack Obama enjoyed the smoothest transition in years. Even his people were complimentary of how the Bush Administration assisted them in preparing to take over the reins of government. Compare this transition period with that with which President Bush was faced in 2001.

When President Bush walked into the White House, he faced extensive sabotage and theft by the immature Liberals which so characterized the Clinton Administration. He wasn't allowed the two months that most elected Presidents enjoy due to the unseemly attempt by his elective opponent, Albert Gore, Jr. to steal the 2000 election.

In addition to the efforts by Clinton Administration operatives to sabotage the Bush Administration's efforts to take the reins of government, President Bush faced a concerted effort by Democrats in Congress to delay and block President Bush's efforts to fill cabinet positions.

Again compare the way in which Democrats in Congress treated President Bush's nominees with how Republicans have treated President Obama's cabinet nominees.

With such an easy path paved by Republicans for the Obama Administration's transition to power, it is incredible to see the repeated missteps and inept handling of issues by President Obama and his band of young Turks advising him.

They seem incapable of finding enough capable Democrats who are untainted by corruption to fill his cabinet. Tax cheats seem more common among President Obama's administration than one might find in the federal prison system.

We now have a man in the White House who has to have people tell him what to say, must have all reporters asking him questioned screened, and it is highly probable given this screening, the questions submitted beforehand.

Are any of you naive enough to believe that Henrietta Hughes (the homeless woman who lives with her son out of a car) just happened to get a ticket to that event and just happened to be one of the questioners? For that matter does anyone believe that any of those questioning President Obama at any of these carefully scripted events was simply lucky enough to be chosen to ask their questions?

Democrats used complain about President Bush appearing at closed events the like Fort-Myers one, yet as far as I can tell, the only person who has managed to ask President Barack Obama an unscripted and unexpected question was "Joe the Plumber" and Democrats attempted to destroy his life. I wonder if the press will go after Henrietta and investigate her background the way they did Joe.

The Secretary of the Treasury further added doubt to the competence of this new administration when he failed miserably to calm fears on Wall Street. Like all of the Obama Administration he seemed unprepared to deal with the current economic crisis and no clue as to what he will do with the monies Congress is now rushing to provide him in dealing with it.

This guy has an exceptionally long way to go to rise to the very low standards the Carter Administration set as the most incompetent presidency in living memory. It will be interesting to see how long it is before someone is able to ask him a question that isn't on his cue cards?

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Foundation joins research, business, and taxpayer groups to deliver "Blueprint for an Effective Budget"

Guidelines on using Rainy Day Fund, improving performance measures, setting funding priorities, and increasing transparency will help legislators make responsible budget decisions

AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation joined several other research, business, and taxpayer groups at the Texas State Capitol today to deliver "Blueprint for an Effective Budget," an agreed-upon set of guidelines for the Legislature to draft an effective state budget.

"Our legislators will have difficult budget decisions to make over the next few months," said The Honorable Talmadge Heflin, Director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for Fiscal Policy. "If they follow these guidelines, they can maintain essential services for the citizens of Texas while positioning our state for a strong economic recovery."

Heflin called for the 81st Texas Legislature to preserve a balance of at least $4.5 billion in the state’s Rainy Day Fund, and to use it only for emergency tax relief or one-time expenditures.

"Yes, we are in a rainy day, but no one knows for sure how long this storm will last," Heflin said. "Texas families have the instinct to stretch their emergency savings as long as possible, and state government needs to show that same discipline."

Heflin also urged the legislature to proceed with caution regarding the pending federal stimulus legislation.

"While we expect there will be some money, it is not guaranteed and we do not know what forms it might take," Heflin said. "This money should be treated the same as our rainy day fund – for use on one-time expenditures."

The blueprint includes several guidelines on how to responsibly establish spending priorities.

"The mathematical task of closing a budget shortfall can be straight forward – just cut everything across the board," Heflin explained. "But writing an effective budget in these times requires that you separate needs from wants, and that you prioritize your spending based on what you're required to do – first by the Texas Constitution, then by state law – and by what produces the greatest value to the taxpayers."

Heflin said that it was important for the Texas Legislature to continue the state's movement toward complete financial transparency.

"Through websites like the Comptroller's Where The Money Goes and our own TexasBudgetSource.com, we’re engaging all Texans in the effort to ferret out waste and fraud in government spending," Heflin said. "We need to ensure that all budgets, expenditures, contracts, and other relevant financial information are published online in a searchable and user-friendly format."

The nine guidelines in the "Blueprint for an Effective Budget" are:

• Limit the growth of state spending to no more than the sum of population growth plus inflation, or the growth in personal income, whichever is less.
• Prioritize state spending on the basis of constitutional mandates, followed by statutory requirements.
• Return excess fee and tax revenues to those who paid them.
• Limit the use of the Rainy Day Fund to either emergency tax relief or one-time emergency spending items.
• Maintain a Rainy Day Fund balance of at least 5 percent of the general revenue and general revenue-dedicated funds spent in the 2010-11 budget.
• Make it easy to identify and report government fraud and waste by posting all budgets, expenditures, contracts, and other relevant financial information online in a searchable and user-friendly format.
• Structure state agencies' performance measures to reflect outcomes rather than outputs.
• Fund only those programs that return a greater value to the taxpayer than the program's cost.
• Avoid duplication of services by focusing on programs that are not provided by local governments or the private sector.

"Blueprint for an Effective Budget" and the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s research on state tax and budget issues can be on the Foundation's primary website, http://www.TexasPolicy.com, and on its government spending transparency website, http://www.TexasBudgetSource.com.

The Honorable Talmadge Heflin is Director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. Heflin served 11 terms in the Texas House of Representatives and chaired the House Appropriations Committee in 2003, leading the Texas Legislature's successful efforts to close a $10 billion budget deficit without a tax increase.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan, free-market research institute based in Austin. More information can be found on the Foundation's primary website, www.TexasPolicy.com, or its government spending transparency website, www.TexasBudgetSource.com.

– 30 –

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GM Sending Tax Payer "Bailout Money" to Brazil

Will Malven
2/08/2009

We knew that the Big Three bailout package was a bad idea, now we have proof.
Apparently GM's financial balance sheet wasn't quite as bad as we were led to believe by Democrats in Congress and GM's corporate management.

The Latin American Herald Tribune has announced that GM is investing $1 billion in their Brazilian operations. Here's part of the article with the usual link:

General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations

Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program

By Russ Dallen
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

"It wouldn't be logical to withdraw the investment from where we're growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets," he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil.

Wouldn't it be nice for American taxpayer dollars intended to "save American jobs" were actually spent in America to protect American jobs?

Thank President Bush for this obscenity. To be sure, it was the Democrats in Congress who pushed the Big Three bailout hearings and urged President Bush to make the loans, "to save American jobs," but it was President Bush who instructed Hank Paulson to take the funds out of TARP. We were told that GM wouldn't last out the quarter without the billions of dollars in "loans" they requested, so after Congress (Republicans) refused to pass the aid bill, President George W. Bush pulled the $9 billion out of the TARP fund.

This was another "URGENT" spending request from the people who now talk with such urgency about spending $1 trillion to stimulate the economy. Any time the people in Washington tell us that something is urgent, we American citizens had better hold on to our wallets.

So now we are supposed to trust these same people to wisely spend $1 trillion of our taxpayer funds? These are the "wise" administrators of our tax dollars who are now telling us, "Just trust us."

A long time ago Ronald Reagan said:

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

Maybe we should pay attention to what he was attempting to tell us. Ronald Reagan was right, big government is the enemy of freedom and liberty. I would add, it is also the enemy of rationality.

We now have a perfect example of what happens when the government spends our tax money precipitously. We get unbridled spending with insufficient or non-existent safeguards to prevent things like this from happening. Now due to the infinite wisdom of our leaders in Washington DC, $1 billion in our tax money is going to Brazil to save Brazilian jobs.

Is it time for the pitch-forks yet?

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Stimulus Bill Will Pass: Congress Doesn't Care What the People Want

Will Malven
1/07/2009

Have we finally reached the point of no return? Have the citizens's representatives become so arrogant, so out of touch with their voters that they feel they no longer have to listen to us? Have they finally accounted themselves so superior, so much wiser, and far more intelligent than those who elected them into office? Apparently so.

Mr. Vice President Joe Biden believes so and he said as much yesterday. In a speech to about 200 Congressional Democrats at the Democrat Party "retreat" in Virginia, he acknowledged that the voters have overwhelmingly expressed their opposition to the proposed $800 billion spending package cynically labeled by President Obama and the Democrats in Congress as the "stimulus package."

He warned that members of Congress:

"But when we do [approve it], I’m sure you’re going to be nailed in ads, ‘Well they voted on that’ 30 second ads.”

Democrats know that this bill is unpopular and they know it will fail, that is why they are so desperate to get Republicans to vote in favor of it. They need a bipartisan vote in the worst way so that when this bill fails to deliver what they have promised, they can avoid being blamed. This effort toward "bipartisanship" is a cynical attempt by our Idiot in Chief, President Barack Hussein Obama, and Congressional Democrats to insulate themselves from criticism. They have no interest in genuine bipartisan legislation.

Advocates for this bill are pushing for its passage urgently telling their fellow senators that the American people want Congress to act. In a way they are correct, taking the right action would be good, but simple action for the sake of action, passing a law simply for the sake of having it is worse than no action at all. The Washington Times reports:

"The CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the
House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing."

For some reason a majority of those in Congress seem to adhere to the mistaken belief that bad legislation is better than no legislation at all. This is bad legislation!

We are being told that the need for this package is urgent because Americans need jobs, but 70% of the money appropriated in this bill will not even enter the economy to create jobs for eighteen months. The only money slated to flash instantly into the economy comes from the tax cuts and from supplemental unemployment insurance.

The only reason President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are pressing so urgently for this spending package is they know that the more information the voters have about it, the more they will oppose it. They are pressing for passage before opposition reaches critical mass and even Democrats hesitate to vote for it.

We are being governed by arrogant fools being led around by the nose by the biggest fool, our Idiot in Chief, who is so far out of his depths that he is now in panic mode.

The words of Alec Guinness playing Obi-wan Kenobi come to mind when Han Solo called him a "damn fool" in their attempt to sabotage the Death Star:

"Who's the more foolish; the fool or the fool who follows him?"

The Pied Piper of Chicago is playing his fools flute and the Democ-rats are following him to our doom. Unfortunately they are being joined by the three most arrogant and foolish Republicans in the senate, Susan Collins (R-ME) who strikes me as a person who would be out of her depths in selling burgers at a McDonalds, Olympia Snowe (R-ME) who strikes me simply as one of those typical arrogant Liberals who believe they are superior to those they represent, and Arlan Specter (R-PA) who has long been one of those arrogant Liberal RINO's who believes that a law degree automatically conveys superior wisdom to its holder.

Senators, I dub thee "The Three RINO Stooges." It seems an appropriate moniker for these jokers. I'm not certain, but perhaps they lack the wisdom to hold that title. They might have more in common with these guys to the right.

Enough jocularity though, this is no laughing matter and these fools and their Democrat pals share more in common with King George the Second against whom Thomas Jefferson penned these words:

“...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

For you Liberals out there, who are not prone to knowing these things, those words come from our own fundamental founding document The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.

Taking guidance from those words, words which all Americans should hold in the highest of reverence, perhaps our current reaction to this action is too mild. We are about to become vassals of an authoritarian state with control over our banking, our corporations, and our lives. We are about to become the largest "third world nation" on the planet.

Doing nothing would be far preferable to this bill. There is a good alternative, the Republicans offered a far superior bill that would funnel more money into our economy faster and cost half as much. This bill is, to use a turn of phrase that became controversial during the last presidential campaign, the epitome of a "pig in lipstick."

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has passed judgment on this bill. In case you are mystified as to what is in this bill, you ain't the only one. This bill is still being written even as it is being debated and voted on. Talk about buying a pig in a poke!

This graphic is the closest I have been able to find to illustrate how insane this bill is:


courtesy of New York Times Feb. 7 2009 Economix
"Stimulus Pie Chart" by Catherine Rampell

As you can see, this is not a "stimulus" bill; this is a wish list of Democrat Party agenda items. It will not help the economy recover; it will spend us into oblivion. This bill will add $1.2 trillion to the national debt and no one not President Obama, not Nancy Pelosi, and not Harry Reid has yet explained to the American people how this spending bill will be paid for. They can't, because they don't have a clue.

Collins, Snowe, and Specter as despicable as their caving in to Democrats may be, they are not the sole targets to blame, there are 58 Democrat Senators marching lock-step with President Obama and all but eleven Democrats in the House. They bear the lion's share of the blame for this abomination.

As Democrats are all too willing to point out, under President Bush's watch the national debt grew from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. I don't know whether these numbers are accurate, but I will not argue with them, so let's just say that those assertions are accurate...then the obvious conclusion to draw from those figures is that government spending doesn't create jobs, if it did we would not be in this economic crisis. So even by their own example and thus admission, this bill will not work.

Do not let this bill go through without contacting your members of Congress and the president. Let them hear from you how you feel about this spending bill. Remember, last year we were told that congress "had to pass the $700 billion TARP package" immediately or the economy would collapse. Only half of that money has been spent-thus proving the lie of the claimed urgency and virtually all of that $350 billion that was spent has simply disappeared. No one knows where it went.

Now here we are again being told that this is an "emergency" and that it is "urgent" that it be passed. It was a lie in 2008 and it is a lie now.

"Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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An Open Letter to Senators Collins, Snowe, and Specter

With reports in the press that Senators Collins, Specter, and possibly Snowe intend to support President Obama and the Democrats in the upcoming senate vote on the "stimulus" package, I felt compelled to send the following letter to them via e-mail.

An Open Letter to Senators Collins, Snowe, and Specter

Dear Senators

It is my understanding that you intend to support President Obama, Senator Harry Reid, and the Democrats in defiance of your own party leadership and the rank and file members of your own party by voting in support of the so-called stimulus package. I beg you to reconsider your decision. In this single act, you are going to raise the national debt to GDP ratio to an historic and unsustainable level.
I have read that Senator Collins has stated:

"The American people want us to work together. They don't want to see us dividing along partisan lines on the most serious crisis confronting our country,"

Senator Collins, the people support bipartisanship when it makes sense, not if it means destroying our entire economic system in doing so; not if bipartisanship means bad legislation and this is bad legislation.

You and your Democrat cronies seem to believe that even bad legislation would be better than no legislation. Such a belief is a fools dream. To vote in support of a fantasy is a betrayal of your sacred trust as a senator.

Where is your sense of responsibility? What possible explanation can you give to so burden our nation, our tax-payers, and future generations? It will take decades of privation and sacrifice to pull America out of the abyss of debt you and the Democrat majority are about to place on tax-payers and their children.

Are you so arrogant that you believe that this solution, a solution which has been tried and proven ineffective before, will magically work this time because you want it to do so? Are you so arrogant that you believe you are wiser than our founding fathers and therefore choose to abandon the economic policies which have made America the envy of the world? It is readily apparent that you are.

Perhaps you believe that you are smarter than those of us who oppose this bill are; you may disabuse yourself of that notion, you are not. Perhaps you simply believe that your understanding of the present economic situation is superior to that of the American voter, it is not. Even the CBO has informed you that what you are doing is wrong.

I think rather that you are so cowardly that you are incapable of withstanding the intense pressure being applied by President Obama, Senate Democrats, and their cheerleaders in the press.

Whatever your reason, your actions, should you pursue the course you are reportedly on, are despicable, contemptible and deserving of the outrage to which you will be subjected by the American voters.

You were elected to represent all Americans in Congress. You were elected to do that which is best for this nation, not for your own political careers, not that which is most expedient, and certainly not that which will destroy our nation’s economy for the foreseeable future.

I have struggled to understand how any senator, let alone a Republican senator, could so betray the American people. I can only conclude that you are either mentally incompetent or so enamored of Socialism that you don’t care how this package will affect the lives of the American people.

Should you choose to continue on this path, you may rest assured that the American people will not forget this betrayal of trust. Most certainly we rank and file republicans will not.

I cannot in good conscience even express my respect for you should you pursue this course in betrayal of all for which America has stood.

I am posting a copy of this e-mail on my website so that all may be made aware of your betrayal and your contempt for the people you are supposed to be representing.

May God have mercy on your souls. May He forgive you, I cannot.

With all due respect for your positions as US Senators.

Sincerely,
Will Malven

http://houstonconservative.com

For those who wish to express their disgust and disapproval at these senators actions, here are their email addresses:

Senator Collins
senator@collins.senate.gov

Senator Snowe
olympia@snowe.senate.gov

Senator Specter
senator_specter@specter.senate.gov

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Senator Stabenow: Leading the Charge Against Freedom of Speech

Will Malven
2/06/2009

Well, I guess it's time to revisit this Orwellian "Fairness Doctrine."

The Liberals in Congress are once more making noise about instituting the "Fairness Doctrine." Senator Debbie Stabenow is at the forefront of this movement and in an interview with Liberal talk show host Bill Press...on his Liberal talk show...discussed the need to institute more "balance:"

"I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place."

Apparently Senator Stabenow doesn't believe in the free market, she believes in a government controlled media. Correction: Senator Stabenow doesn't believe in the free market of ideas except when it comes to promoting her husband's business-Thomas Athans, is the co-founder of the liberal Talk USA Radio network and is now the Executive Vice-President of liberal Air America.

Should anyone be surprised that a Liberal doesn't believe in the First Amendment to the Constitution? Should anyone be surprised that a Liberal Senator is trying to corrupt the Constitution to help her husband's flagging business?

[Perhaps she thinks that supporting his Liberal talk radio network will keep her husband from seeking pleasures with another 20 year old hooker like he did just one year ago this month.]

No group has shown more contempt for the Constitution than those on the Left. No other sector of the broad American political spectrum as exerted as much effort to side-step or overturn our Constitution, both judicially and legislatively, as have those on the Left.

Our newly elected president, Barack Obama, is already on record bemoaning the fact that, as he put it:

"generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties." Source-2001 Barack Obama interview on Chicago public radio station WBEZ

So why should we expect anything different from a Liberal Democrat senator?

The fairness doctrine is nothing less than a blatant and transparent attempt by those on the Left to silence private American citizens who are exercising their First Amendment right to speak out against the policies of a dangerous Liberal government.

There is no legal entity attempting to prevent Liberal talk radio from being on the air. In fact there have been countless vain attempt to bring Liberal talk shows to the AM dial...every one of them has failed. A few have proven successful in certain politically Liberal markets, but no one has succeeded in gaining a nationally syndicated audience.

The reason is simple; people don't want what Liberal talk radio has to offer. It is a commercial failure. The only means of maintaining a Liberal talk show nationally is through the intervention of the federal government, as in the NPR and Pacifica networks, both of which depend on government and private contributions. Got that? Even those two Left-wing networks wouldn't exist without federal tax money.

In the free market economy, Liberal ideas don't sell. That is the reason that Sabenow and other Democrats in Congress are attempting to muzzle Conservative talk radio. They can't compete in the free market of ideas so they want to force radio stations to carry unprofitable programming in a cynical attempt to silence people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, Mark Levin, Dennis Miller and all of the other wildly successful Conservative talk show hosts simply because they are critical of the Democrat Socialist Agenda.

Government censorship of political speech is a direct violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Which means the Senator Stabenow and her cohorts in crime are in violation of their oath of office...

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

Every Senator and Representative takes the above oath to "support and defend" our Constitution. Every Senator and Representative takes the above oath to "bear true faith and allegiance to" our Constitution. Stabenow’s efforts therefore constitute a breach of trust and a violation of her oath of office.

Her efforts are cynical, unpatriotic, and criminal. It is time for these federal oath breakers to be smacked down. Time to speak truth to Liberal power and call these liars out on their lies.

These Liberals are very big on threatening witnesses they call before them with Contempt of Congress charges if the refuse to cooperate; how about their Contempt for the Constitution? How about their Contempt for the American people?

Any effort to silence or interfere with the free exchange of ideas in America must be met with opposition and outrage. The so-called Fairness Doctrine is an abomination created by those who would have us live in an imperial America, not a republican America. It must be stopped.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Statement on the Legislative Leadership’s Budget Instruction Letter

Statement by The Honorable Talmadge Heflin, Director of TPPF’s Center for Fiscal Policy

"We are pleased that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Joe Straus are getting out in front of our state’s budget situation by asking agencies for targeted spending reductions. This is a time for state government to prioritize needs and cut some of the least important items, and the letter from Dewhurst and Straus seeks precisely that.

"Beginning the belt tightening process in the current fiscal year gives us a head start on getting our spending in line with available revenues in the next state budget. We should not leave ourselves in the position of relying on an influx of federal funds that might not come."

The Honorable Talmadge Heflin is Director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. Heflin served 11 terms in the Texas House of Representatives and chaired the House Appropriations Committee in 2003, leading the Texas Legislature’s successful efforts to close a $10 billion budget deficit without a tax increase.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. More information can be found on the Foundation’s website, www.TexasPolicy.com.

– 30 –

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TPPF commentary: Employment statistics highlight need for more pro-growth policies

By James Quintero

Finding a job in Texas just got harder.

Last month, the Texas Workforce Commission reported that the state’s economy shed 25,700 jobs in December 2008. Among the hardest hit industries were manufacturing and trade, transportation, and utilities which lost a combined 16,100 jobs.

The state’s unemployment rate rose to 6 percent, its highest level since July 2004, and is projected to reach 6.6 percent later this year.

December’s sour employment figures mark the second consecutive month that seasonally adjusted non-farm employment fell. The national recession and falling oil and gas prices, it seems, have finally begun to take their toll on the Texas economy with more trouble on the way.

Comptroller Susan Combs’ recent assessment of the Texas economy warns that 111,000 jobs will disappear over the first two quarters of this year before the job market begins to rebound in the fourth quarter. The economic recovery, however, hinges on whether or not businesses have the confidence to begin hiring again in the months ahead. Based on the results of one recent survey, things aren’t looking too good.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey, which polled over 100 Texas manufacturers, found that 47 percent of business executives felt their companies faced a “dismal outlook” moving forward while 55 percent of respondents were concerned about “worsening market conditions.”

With employers skittish and unemployment certain to rise over the next few months, the need for more pro-growth policies couldn’t be more real. The economy is going to need smart public policy that frees Texas businesses, workers, and families from the costs of big government.

Fortunately, a number of promising bills are working their way through the Legislature.

Several legislators have already filed proposals to increase the exemption for the state’s new margin tax from $300,000 to $1 million, allowing more small businesses and entrepreneurs – the heart of the state’s economy – to keep more of what they had earned. The timing of this bill couldn’t be better as many small businesses are just trying to keep their doors open.

Another encouraging piece of legislation is House Bill 508, authored by Representative Lois Kolkhorst. The bill would authorize the Comptroller’s office to investigate the effects of replacing Texas’ property taxes with a broad-based sales tax. Although the bill would only authorize a study and does not guarantee any future tax relief, alternatives to the property tax system need to be reviewed.

Texas businesses and homeowners pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation – the state ranked 13th nationally in per capita property tax collections for fiscal year 2006, according to the Tax Foundation. If Texas is going to successfully attract businesses and jobs, we must address the issue of ever-escalating property taxes.

One of the most important bills in the upcoming session is House Bill 994 by Representative Ken Paxton, which would change the state’s constitutional spending limit away from the growth in personal income to the sum of population growth plus inflation.

This measure is important because it effectively caps the cost of state government per person. Growth in the state’s budget must be closely guarded to avoid higher taxes in the future, and let businesses who are looking to relocate or expand know they are welcome in Texas.

Bringing jobs back to Texas is going to require smart, forward-thinking public policy that emphasizes low taxes, fiscal discipline, and limited government. How closely lawmakers choose to follow that model will dictate much of the coming economic recovery and how quickly all of us see an improved job market.

James Quintero is a fiscal policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

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Texas PolicyCast: California emissions in Texas?

Could California emissions standards be on their way to Texas? A recent decision by the Obama Administration could open the door to states being allowed to set their own vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards that are even more stringent than current federal law. What would this mean for Texas? We ask Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Obama Follies: Another Tax Cheat in the Cabinet

Will Malven
2/05/2009

Don't any Democrats pay their taxes? No wonder they are always pushing for tax hikes...they don't pay them anyway.

For those keeping score, this is Obama nominee number four on the tax cheat list. It appears that Obama's nominee for Labor Secretary; Representative Hilda Solis (D-CA) has a problem. The Senate canceled hearings on her nomination after it was revealed that her husband had outstanding tax liens amounting to $6,400 against his business.

Here's the USA Today story:

Husband of Rep. Solis, Labor nominee, settles tax liens

By Matt Kelley
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The husband of President Obama's Labor secretary nominee paid about $6,400 Wednesday to settle tax liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years against his business, the Obama administration told USA TODAY this afternoon.

The disclosure came shortly before a scheduled 2 p.m. meeting of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will vote on Rep. Hilda Solis' nomination as labor secretary. The hearing was postponed; no reason was immediately revealed.

At a press conference, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said of Solis: "I read the story in USA TODAY and it quotes somebody who works here. Obviously we know about the story. We reviewed her tax returns and her tax returns are in order.Her husband had an issue."

"She's not a partner in that business," Gibbs said. "We're not going to penalize her for her husband's business mistakes."

Honest folks, I'm not making this stuff up. I couldn't because you wouldn't believe me. Besides, I'd be too embarrassed to make up a story this far fetched...except that this one is true.

This is the "Change" we were promised? First it was Bill Richardson withdrawing his name for Commerce Secretary because he is under investigation for corruption involving steering New Mexico state bond business to political a contributor's business. Then it was Timothy Geithner, Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary, who was forced to pay $34,000 in taxes he owed and who intentionally allowed the statute of limitation to expire on back taxes he owed from earlier years.

Tuesday, former South Dakota Democrat Senator Tom Dashcle was forced to withdraw his name from consideration when it was revealed that he had paid about $140,000 in back taxes during his vetting process.

Yesterday Nancy Killefer was forced to withdraw her name from consideration as Chief Performance Officer when it became known that she had failed to pay taxes for two nannies she had hired over the course of a year and a half.

Now, today we have this emergency cancellation of confirmation hearings for the Obama nominee for Secretary of Labor. The Culture of Corruption is a Democrat Party phenomenon obviously.

This is incompetence on an unprecedented scale from a new administration. These clowns haven't a clue what they are doing. I guess the American voters, or at least a majority of them, are getting precisely what they voted for; incompetence on an historical scale.

Tragically funny. This guy is going to be sitting in the big chair for four years? Saints and Ministers of Mercy preserve us!!!

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Chu On This: Obama's Global Warming Secretary Clueless

Will Malven
2/04/2009

God save us from the true believers of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Well Liberals are persistent if nothing else. Last week it was the Goracle holding court in Washington DC with every lemming of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee frozen in rapt attention by the dire predictions of Albert Bore Gore, Jr. Seemingly awed by being in the presence of the Goracle, the Senate Lemmings lobbed softball questions and nodded wisely in assentation as he issued his dire warning (what is that now, dire warning number 137?) of the impending global disaster as people in the real world...those braving the freezing cold and blizzard Washington was experiencing...struggled to get to their destinations through the snow slickened streets and two foot high snow drifts.

It would all be comical if the possible fruits of their absurd efforts weren't so destructive to our economy and our liberty. These Chicken Little's of the climate are so brain-dead that they cannot even see when they are contradicting themselves.

Senator Kerry began his committee hearing by reminiscing about the time that he and Albert Gore, Jr. held the first meeting on Global Warming:

"...we also teamed up on the first ever Senate hearing on climate change for the commerce committee back in 1988. And on a sweltering June day some Senate staff opened up the windows and drove home the point, with everyone sweating in their seats during Dr. James Hansen's historic and tragically prescient testimony. We are obviously not going to repeat that gesture today, [Oh really, why don't you tell us the reason for your reticence Mr. Kerry-Heinz] but I speak for everyone on this committee when I tell you how much we appreciate you being here today, Mr. Vice President, and particularly on a day in what passes down here as tough winter weather.

To the nay‑sayers and deniers out there, let me make it clear that the little snow in Washington does nothing to diminish the reality of the crisis we face. [Emphasis added]

I understand now, John-boy, it was relevant that you open the windows on a "sweltering June day" (Isn't that amazing, a sweltering day in June?) because you were trying to prove a point about Global Warming, but the freezing weather of one of the coldest January's on record would have contradicted your Global Warming agenda...well consistency has never been very high on the list of Liberal priorities.

I think I've got it now, hot weather important portent of things to come, cold weather just a head-fake by God to fool us, right-got it.

Anyway the Nobel Laureate (we all know how important and meaningful that "honor" is) had his day in the Senate-light and has gone on to his huge carbon foot print house on his private jet to sell more faux "carbon offsets" to those gullible enough to buy them. So enter state Left (and I do mean "Left") the President's new Carbon Warrior in Chief, Steven Chu.

Mr. Chu is now issuing his own dire predictions of doom and gloom...isn't it funny how every issue is a crisis and is always accompanied by dire predictions of doom and gloom when it comes from the Liberals.

Mr. Chu may be a physicist of great accomplishment, but he is no climatologist. The LA Times has his Global Warming Propaganda today:

California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns

'We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California,' Steven Chu says. He sees education as a means to combat threat.

By Jim Tankersley
February 4, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama's cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration's plans to combat it.

Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation's leading agricultural producer.

In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.

"Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh my!"

Come on PEOPLE were you born yesterday? One would think that these idiot lemmings spouting their faux science were. It's like the world was created yesterday and has never seen temperatures warming than it did in 1998...notice I said 1998, not 2008. That's because 1998 was the warmest year in this so called Global Warming Crisis. Yep, it hasn't warmed any further in ten years.

Let me repeat that, it hasn't gotten any warmer in a decade. In fact since 1998, the trend, such as there is, has been downward, with the last two years among the coolest.

Anyone with a high school education knows, or should know that the planet has been through dozens of cycles of warming and cooling going back for millions of years...all of it occurring without the "evil influence" of man and his industrial revolution...all of it as a result of natural astronomical and solar events...and none of it as a result of CO2 build up in the atmosphere.

That's right; Albert Gore, Jr. is a liar. He makes up data to support his, growingly discredited, pet theory because the data just don't support the hypothesis any longer. Al's buddy James Hansen is a liar. He's been caught penciling in data to support his lies.

Now we have a new Chicken Little in Chief whom the article even admits is no climatologist, he's an administrator:

Chu is not a climate scientist. He won his Nobel for work trapping atoms with laser light. He taught at Stanford University and directed the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he reoriented researchers to pursue "clean energy" technologies to help reduce the use of greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels in the U.S., before Obama tapped him to head the Energy Department. [Emphasis added]

He used to be a scientist, now he's a bureaucrat who "taught, directed, and reoriented" other scientist to work on his pet theory. Of course you know what happens if you don't do what your boss directs you to do, you lose funding for your project, or get fired.

Coercion is a great generator of global warming fervor among scientists whose livelihood depends on federal funding. You can bet there will be a plethora of papers published by professors who look to the federal government for funding.

• Fact: The planet has been going through cycles of warming and cooling for millions of years.
• Fact: The planet has witnessed periods of warming far greater than the current warm period within human historical records...with no industrial revolution.
• Fact: A growing number of climatologists now believe that far from entering a period of "Global Warming," we are now entering a period of Global Cooling.
• Fact: Those who follow the actual data do not believe in Global Warming, those who follow computer models do.
• Fact: Computer models show only the pre-existing biases of those who created them. They can be made to show anything and can be made to confirm or deny any theory.
• Fact: Global Warming alarmism has become a lucrative career and business opportunity for those cynical enough to pursue it.
• Fact: Global temperatures peaked in 1998 and since then have been trending generally downward.
• Fact: Ice core sample data prove that CO2 levels trail global temperature increases, not precede them.
• Fact: Albert Gore, Jr. is an idiot who knows less about science than he does about how to govern...(Oops! How did that one get in here?).
• Fact: The IPCC lied when they claimed that all of the scientist listed as authors in their politically motivated screed agreed with their conclusions.

Well, don't be too hard on Liberals; lying comes to them as easily as taking money from tax-payers and giving it to those whom they deem worthy. The problem I have with them is that they wish to take us all down that same Yellow Brick Road that they wish to follow.

And now to scare you some more, here is another tidbit from our new Global Warming Czar, Steven Chu:

"...Chu made clear that he sees public education as a key part of the administration's strategy to fight global warming.

Can you say "indoctrination?" It appears that this elitist believes that the reason so many people doubt his pet theory is that they just don't understand it. So to remedy this failing, he and his fellow Stalinists, will use our public education system to indoctrinate our children. I wonder if "re-education camps" are far behind.

If you don't believe maybe President Obama, a self-confessed ardent admirer of China, will send you to be re-educated they same way that the Chinese have done to their own population.

As an aside, I do hear that Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL) has submitted a bill in Congress H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six "national emergency centers" for corralling civilians on military installations...strictly for our own good, of course. Source LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER: Bill creates detention camps in U.S. for 'emergencies'

I'm sure these events are all just innocent coincidences.

Funny isn't it? All my life I have heard Liberals warning whomever was foolish enough to listen to them about the threat of "Big Brother" those on the Right pose. Yet every time I look to see who is threatening my individual freedoms and liberty, it is someone from the Left. From gun control laws (for your own good), to seatbelt laws (for your own good), to global warming and all of the restrictive laws being sought under its auspices (for your won good), it is the Left which impinges on the individual's rights (for your own good, mind you).

True freedom includes the freedom to screw up, the freedom to fail, and the freedom to suffer the consequences of your own actions. The result of that freedom is the right to succeed, the right to excel, and the right to prosper from the fruits of your labor...not the labor of another person. That is the nation our Founding Fathers left to us and that is the nation in which I still choose to live.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

Maybe it's not so funny.

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Obama Incompetence...and Killefer Makes Three

Will Malven
2/03/2009

Now this is becoming comical. Apparently the hypocrisy in the Obama administration only extends to those tax cheats that owe $34,000 in back taxes and are up for Treasury Secretary. It looks like Tim Geithner made it in just under the wire.

Today the Obama Administration's effort to find Democrats qualified for executive level positions who aren't ethically challenged took another two hits. Geithner survived, but Obama's nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department, Tom Daschle was forced to resign under the scandal that he had failed to pay $128,000 in taxes he owed for a car and driver that a one of his wealthy supporters had furnished.

This is the same Tom Daschle who stated back on May 7, 1008

"Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter."

Seems like most Liberals, what's good for the goose isn't necessarily good for the gander. Typical.
Now we also get word that another Obama appointee, Nancy Killefer an executive with the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. who was slated to be Chief Performance Officer in the White House wrote a letter to President Obama saying that she had:

"come to realize in the current environment that my personal tax issue of D.C. unemployment tax could be used to create exactly the kind of distraction and delay those duties must avoid."

Thus we have a third tax cheat to be nominated and the second to resign because of those problems. Although Ms. Killefan declined to specify what caused this sudden action, it has been alleged that she had hired two "nanny's" to take care of her teen-aged boys and had not paid taxes on them for a year and a half...uh-oh another Nanny-gate.

What's that Madame Speaker Pelosi? Did you say something about a "Republican culture of corruption?"

To quote President Obama's favorite pastor, Democrats'

"chickens...coming home...to roost."

This couldn't have been scripted by "The Architect" any better. Karl Rove must be laughing his tail off. We aren't even three weeks into the Obama Administration and already we are seeing what a horrendous comedy of errors it is.

I swear Jimmy Carter is looking better and better in comparison.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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The Obama White House: Reckless and Dangerously Naive

Will Malven
2/03/2009

We were told that the Obama Inauguration was an historic occasion. Certainly we are witnessing an historic administration in the making, though I doubt what we have witnessed so far is what the pundits and press had in mind when they made that observation.

Two words best characterize the foreign policy efforts of this fledgling administration, reckless and naive. I doubt most citizens casting their votes for Candidate Obama could have imagined the level of incompetence we have witnessed thus far. What has been evident from the outset is that President Obama and the young Turks with whom he has surrounded himself are completely out of their depths in dealing with the onerous tasks which confront a President on a daily basis.

Most fledgling administrations enter office determined to "hit the ground running," but few stumble quite as spectacularly as this administration of "hope and change" has.

President Obama began his first day in the Oval Office by signing a hastily drawn up, poorly thought out, Presidential order to close the enemy combatant internment facility in Guantanamo, Cuba within twelve months.

It immediately became apparent that he and his advisors had given little thought to what they were going to do with the prisoners being held there after the facility was closed. It is unimaginable that any responsible authority would declare the closing of a prison housing over two hundred exceptionally dangerous criminals before they had determined where they were going to put them afterwards.

Just like his early promises to pull our troops out of Iraq in sixteen months, on which he has subsequently reneged, it was a crass political move intended as a gesture to his extreme Left-wing base and typifies the sort of cynical knee-jerk actions Liberals take when they are concerned more with appearing "enlightened" than they are with doing what is best for the nation. Unfortunately, unlike the promise to prematurely pull the troops out of Iraq, this promise has now become an official policy of the administration.

Even more embarrassingly, President Obama compounded this gross mistake by assembling a large group of his advisors and members of the press to witness the great event when he wasn't even fully briefed on what it was he was signing.

President Obama has continued to demonstrate his lack of judgment by choosing an Arabic satellite TV network, El Arabia, for his first formal television interview as president. This misguided move which plays into the hands of those critics to whom his motives and his core beliefs are already suspect and his ill-chosen offer of friendship with Muslim nations including an offer of negotiation "without preconditions" with Iran (the single largest promoter-supporter of terrorism in the world) proves once again that Liberal Democrats have never learned the lesson of Neville Chamberlain's "Peace for Our Time."

From Whitehouse.gov, the official webpage of the current administration, here is their agenda for dealing with Iran:

Diplomacy: Barack Obama supports tough and direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. Now is the time to use the power of American diplomacy to pressure Iran to stop their illicit nuclear program, support for terrorism, and threats toward Israel. Obama and Biden will offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization, economic investments, and a move toward normal diplomatic relations. If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation. In carrying out this diplomacy, we will coordinate closely with our allies and proceed with careful preparation. Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.

I can just sense the fear emanating from the leaders of the Iranian government over the threat of stepped up "economic pressure and political isolation." The level of naïveté coming out of this group in the White House is simply astounding...and frightening.

Predictably, our enemies in the Muslim world interpreted this gesture of friendship as a sign of weakness. Gholam Hossein Elham, Iran's Official Spokesman and Holocaust denier was quoted in the Mehr News Agency as saying:

"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed. Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change."Source Breitbart-Iran says Obama's offer to talk shows US failure

That reaction is about as close to an official state reaction as you can get. The Mehr News Agency is the official news arm of the Iranian Islamic Propagation Organization. The IPO was created by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1981 to serve as the Islamic enforcement agency of the Muslim theocracy and controls all aspects of Iranian society.

President Ahmadinejad responded to Obama's profferred hand with a tirade in which he demanded an apology from America, an abandonment of Israel, and a withdrawal of American troops from nations around the world:

"Those who speak of change must apologize to the Iranian people and try to repair their past bad acts and the crimes they committed against Iran...Change means giving up support for the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering...Zionists and let the Palestinian nation decide its own destiny...Change means putting an end to U.S. military presence in the world."

The Obama Administration and President Obama have made an inauspicious beginning that presages even greater incompetence in the future.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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Obama's Creeping Promises

Will Malven

Obama:"We're going to 'create' jobs. Let's begin at two million...anybody...alright, we've got two. Two and a half, anyone?"

Has anyone out there noticed how Obama's promises on the number of jobs created by the "stimulus" package in this economy have been gradually creeping higher and higher as the poll numbers have begun to slip and pushback by Republicans in Congress has become stronger?

When the discussion of this "Obamanation" of a spending bill began, President Obama was promising that he would create "two million new jobs." It was soon pointed out by Conservatives, that two million jobs is precisely the same number that one would expect to see created if the economy was simply left to recover without any action being taken at all.

Obama-continuing:"...two and a half...two and a half...anyone? We've got two and a half, two and a half million jobs! Three anyone? Do I hear three? Come on people we've got to get this economy going. Anyone? Madame Speaker Pelosi? Three? We've got three!"

Not long after, the estimates of new jobs created by this pork-laden spending bill grew to "two and a half to three million." Republicans began to examine the bill more carefully and began to point out all of the absurd, wasteful spending being proposed as a sop to Liberal groups as a reward for supporting Democrat Candidates.

Obama:"Do I hear three and a half? Over there, Senator Reid, how about it? Yes! We've got three and a half from the distinguished Senator from Nevada."

As criticism grew, so did the job creation estimates. As the $300 million sop to Planned Parenthood and the ludicrous $200 million included to "re-sod" the National Mall in Washington D.C. became known and were eventually removed from the plan, the estimate grew to "three and a half million jobs will be created" by the bill.

Obama really getting into it now:"We've got three and a half! Three and a half million jobs created...do I hear four? Come on folks let's hear four...dig deep folks this is for the Democrat Party majority now...let's hear some action...four? Anyone? What's that Mr. Secretary Geithner? Four? Yes? That's it folks, we've got four million jobs...four million jobs created. Do I hear four and a half?..."

Then the Republicans in the House unanimously voted against the "stimulus package," along with eleven Democrats (the true bipartisan vote). Now as the bill faces a loss in the Senate, we are being told by the Presidents flak agents that the bill would create "four million new jobs."

Notice, the package hasn't changed in any significant way. The spending priorities remain the same, the breakdown in where the money goes remains unaltered, and the total amount of money is unchanged, yet the number of jobs they are projecting that will be created keeps increasing.

You want to talk about creeping inflation? The Obama administration has gone from "two million new jobs created" to "four million new jobs created" in the space of a month with no fundamental changes in the bill. Talk about pulling numbers out of the air...

Looks like the clueless arrogant neophytes and Clinton holdovers in the White House believe they can "create jobs" simply by waving their hands. Sorry I don't believe that President Barack Hussein Obama is the new messiah and I don't believe in magic.

What I do believe in is the desperation of people who don't have a clue as to what they are doing or how to get this economy going again. President Obama and his people are so locked into their Keynesian thinking that they cannot imagine any other possibility even given the evidence staring them in the face.

These people and the President are so far out of their depths that they are forced to invent numbers to convince members of congress to vote for a package which will do nothing for our economy and possibly do bad things to our economy.

This is really scary. We are only two weeks into the new Obama Administration and we have seen nothing but incompetence and dangerous naiveté. At this rate, Jimmy Carter may see his reputation as the worst President of the last 100 years eclipsed by this group of clueless wonders.

I guess it won't be long until we start hearing the number "five million" being kicked around by the "Nobama-ites."

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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