A Republican state legislator released documents Tuesday which he says show the community-organizing group ACORNOklahoma within five years. focused on helping Democrats in three legislative races in the November 2008 election and had developed a game plan to "take power” in
The documents, which include legislative district maps and various forms, were recovered from computers abandoned by ACORN workers in Oklahoma City, said Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City. Also found was a script apparently used in Houston to go door-to-door to encourage voters to vote for Barack Obama in November 2008.
"They say they’re not political, but one of the subdirectories was called political action plans,” Reynolds said. "It was their political plans to take over key targeted races in Oklahoma City to show how powerful they are.”
One of the key legislative races mentioned in the documents was the Senate District 43 race involving Reynolds’ brother. State Sen. Jim Reynolds, an Oklahoma City Republican who won by about 3,600 votes in 2004, won by 159 votes in 2008.
Mike Reynolds said he was contacted in late summer 2008 by people who had leased office space near SW 25 and Robinson Avenue to ACORN. He was told the group had stopped paying the lease. Reynolds said he bought two computers for which passwords were found in desks.
Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Gary Jones said ACORN, officially the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, had three Oklahoma City offices in 2008. The organization now does not list any Oklahoma City office on its Web site.
No one answered at an ACORN office Tuesday in Tulsa. Messages left at an ACORN office in Washington were not returned. A spokesman with The Advance Group, a New York-based company which handles public relations for ACORN, said Tuesday he was unaware of the documents.
Todd Goodman, chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, said he was unaware ACORN had any volunteers working in Oklahoma City during the 2008 elections.
Goodman questioned the release of the documents a year after their alleged discovery.
Reynolds, who said he had been busy with legislative matters the past several months, said about 1,600 documents are on the computers. Some of them have nothing to do with Oklahoma and deal with other states.
In which our liberal author awakens one morning from uneasy dreams . . .
By David Kahane
I have a nightmare.
I have a nightmare that sometime before the 2010 elections, the scales will fall from your eyes and you will see us as we really are.
I have a nightmare that you will read C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and realize that it is not fiction.
I have a nightmare that you will read Plunkitt of Tammany Hall and get firsthand instruction in how we steal elections.
I have a nightmare that you will read Machiavelli’s The Prince and realize that we got there way ahead of you.
I have a nightmare that you will read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and recognize us in the figure of Ellsworth Toohey — the “friend” who is in fact your mortal enemy.
I have a nightmare that you will read Dickens’s Bleak House and see us in the character of Mrs. Jellyby, the “telescopic philanthropist,” who lets her own family go to hell while she frets over the fate of an African tribe.
I have a nightmare that you will re-watch Saving Private Ryan and realize that Corporal Upham, the liberal stickler for process played by Jeremy Davies, saves the German prisoner’s life only to get most of his platoon killed, including Tom Hanks. And then commits the very war crime he tried to stop.
I have a nightmare that while you’re enjoying the scatological dialogue and ultra-violence of Pulp Fiction, you’ll realize that Vincent Vega, the unbeliever, dies unredeemed in Butch Coolidge’s bathroom, while Jules, who accepts the reality of miracles, grants absolution to Pumpkin and Honey Bunny and is thus saved.
I have a nightmare that you will go back and watch any B-movie made between 1933 and 1963, like Gun Crazy, and see an America that was not afraid of inanimate objects like firearms, and instead blamed the man for the crime.
I have a nightmare that some of you are old enough to recall a time when the law was an honorable profession, the Constitution was not so deconstructed that, essentially, all that is left of it is the Commerce Clause, and your doctor charged a fee for service and made house calls.
I have a nightmare that when you think of the late Ted Kennedy, resting peacefully at Arlington Cemetery, all you will be able to see is Mary Jo Kopechne, gasping for air in the Oldsmobile while the senator returned to his hotel room and went to sleep.
I have a nightmare that you will remember that Sirhan Sirhan was a Palestinian who hated Bobby Kennedy because of his support of Israel.
I have a nightmare that you’ll realize that, far from being a right-wing nut, Lee Harvey Oswald was a self-proclaimed Marxist who defected to the Soviet Union, came home with a Russian wife, agitated on behalf of Castro’s Cuba, tried to re-defect to Russia, returned to Dallas, brought his rifle to work, and killed JFK with a classic marksman’s shot group: miss, hit, kill.
I have a nightmare that you’ll remember that, in the week leading up to the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, there was no right-wing “climate of hate” in San Francisco as Nancy Pelosi, aka Maerose Prizzi, would have you believe. Instead, the city was riveted by the murders of Congressman Leo Ryan and journalists Don Harris, Bob Brown, and Greg Robinson at the Port Kaituma airstrip on Nov. 18, 1978. This was followed by the “revolutionary suicides” of hundreds of Jim Jones’s radical-leftist Peoples Temple followers, most of them African American. One of the suicide notes read, “I, Marceline Jones, leave all bank accounts in my name to the Communist Party of the USSR.”
I have a nightmare that people will eventually realize that Dan White, who shot Moscone and Milk not over gay rights but over Moscone’s refusal to give him back his seat on the Board of Supervisors, was a Democrat.
Dozens of forged and fraudulent absentee ballots from people registered to vote on the Working Families Party line were filed in the Sept. 15 primary elections in Troy.
Documents at the county Board of Elections show the fraudulent ballots were handled by or prepared on behalf of various elected officials and leaders and operatives for the Democratic and Working Families parties.
There may be as many as 50 absentee ballots that were forged, according to people close to the case. Countywide, there were 126 absentee ballots applied for on the Working Families Party line.
What isn’t mentioned is that WFP is nothing more than a front group for ACORN. Or as Roger Stone put it:
The Working Families Party is not about working people or families and it isn’t really a party. The WFP is a wholly owned subsidiary of ACORN. Bertha Lewis co-chair of the Working Families Party is the Executive Director of New York ACORN. New York ACORN leader, Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN’s national and New York office at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.
WFP is essentially a money funnel which pays for an aggressive door to door canvas. Largely funded by unions, the WFP is ACORN’s “political arm” in New York State. Candidates supported by the Working Families Party and issues supported by ACORN are both advocated on the door steps of target voter homes as they share one major voter canvas.
Adding more evidence to the ACORN-WFP link is Erick Erickson’s examination of Bertha Lewis’ leaked rolodex. Erickson predicted that “With ACORN’s growing negative reputation, it is only a matter of time before it spills over to the Working Families Party.”
The spilling started in Troy, and it will likely flow to all the way to Brooklyn. Yesterday, Rensselae r County Judge Robert Jacon named a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations of fraud.
And in a completely unrelated story, today in Nevada, Christopher Edwards will testify in a preliminary hearing in a criminal fraud case against ACORN. Edwards, the former Las Vegas field director for ACORN, plead guilty last month and has agreed to testify that ACORN devised a program the encouraged and rewarded employees for producing fraudulent voter registrations.
A cherished maxim of self-congratulatory liberals is the notion that diplomacy and negotiation are always the best course of action because "as long as the two sides are talking, they are not shooting." That was not true on the morning of December 7, 1941. On that very day, Japanese diplomats were in Washington to continue ongoing talks for peace between Japan and America, as Japanese planes were slaughtering some 2,400 American servicemen at Pearl Harbor.
President Obama now has America, and Israel, on that same course in regard to Iran. Finally, Obama is to begin his much ballyhooed talks with Iran tomorrow over its nuclear weapons program. But Iran, not just dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has already clearly stated its answer to Obama's entreaties on the issue. Iran will not even consider changing course on its nuclear weapons program. Indeed, it has insisted it will not even discuss the program in its talks with President Obama. To underscore the futility of any negotiations, Iran celebrated this week's planned talks with a series of missile launches over the weekend.
These extended talks will just give Iran even more time to develop nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them. An American President should have the moxie and insight to see that. If we wake up one morning, surprised as we were on that fateful day in 1941, to find that Iran has nuked an Israeli city and murdered millions of Jews, I would expect President Obama to resign in disgrace.
What else could he do at that point? He is not going to launch a nuclear attack on Iran. And once Iran demonstrates that it has and will use nuclear weapons, is Obama going to risk a conventional attack on them? No, he is just going to give another speech. But will anyone be listening at that point, in the face of the carnage of the Israeli nuclear counterattack on Iran? This bloodiest day in world history, Holocaust 2.0, is what Obama must be acting to avoid now, through effective means, not dreamy, flower child platitudes.
An important article that should be read by every leftist on the planet. Go read the rest, and forward to your "flower child" acquaintances...
Barack Obama has displayed a disturbing pattern of work ethics: shirking work; claiming success when he was not entitled to do so; hiding his failures; and claiming the work of others as his own -- when it was successful. These are not character traits that we should associate with Presidents.
Barack Obama won praise for Dreams From My Father, a 1995 memoir of his life that was published when he reached the grand old age of thirty-four. The provenance of the book has come into question, led by a series of American Thinker columns by Jack Cashill, who used textual analysis to ascribe its writing --or at least a good portion of it -- to Bill Ayers, Obama's neighbor, former Weatherman, Obama campaign supporter and partner in various activist groups in Chicago. This claim has been echoed in a new book by best-selling author Christian Andersen, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage who wrote that sources close to the Obamas told him that Barack Obama turned over his notes and tapes to Bill Ayers to compose the book.
Subsequently, under questioning by Cashill on a nationally-syndicated radio program, Andersen averred that two separate sources in Hyde Park confirmed to him the story of sending the notes and tapes to Ayers.
Whoever wrote Dreams clearly embellished Obama's work history following graduation from Columbia. Obama claimed to have worked at a high powered consulting firm as a research assistant. A former colleague who sat down the hall from him debunked Obama's puffery in 2005:
First, it wasn't a consulting house; it was a small company that published newsletters on international business. Like most newsletter publishers, it was a bit of a sweatshop. I'm sure we all wished that we were high-priced consultants to multinational corporations. But we also enjoyed coming in at ten, wearing jeans to work, flirting with our co-workers, partying when we stayed late, and bonding over the low salaries and heavy workload.
Barack worked on one of the company's reference publications. Each month customers got a new set of pages on business conditions in a particular country, punched to fit into a three-ring binder. Barack's job was to get copy from the country correspondents and edit it so that it fit into a standard outline. There was probably some research involved as well, since correspondents usually don't send exactly what you ask for, and you can't always decipher their copy. But essentially the job was copyediting.
Obama may have felt the need to polish a resume that would fit on the back of a postage stamp, as my colleague Kyle Shiver has characterized his curriculum vitae. But the problem goes deeper than Cashill may have uncovered.
UPDATE: The Climate Audit server is getting hit with heavy traffic and is slow. If anyone has referenced graphs in blog posts or news articles lease see the mirrored URL list for the graphs at the end of this article and please consider replacement in your posting. I’ve also got a mirrored article of the Climate Audit post from Steve McIntyre. -Anthony
We’ve always suspected that Mann’s tree ring proxies aren’t all they are cracked up to be. The graph below is stunning in it’s message and I’m pleased to present it to WUWT readers. I’m sure the Team is already working up ways to say “it doesn’t matter”.
The QOTW this week centers around this graph:
The quote of the week is:
I hardly know where to begin in terms of commentary on this difference.
The graph above shows what happens to the “Hockey Stick” after additional tree ring data, recently released (after a long and protracted fight over data access) is added to the analysis of Hadley’s archived tree ring data in Yamal, Russia.
All of the sudden, it isn’t the “hottest period in 2000 years” anymore.
Steve writes:
The next graphic compares the RCS chronologies from the two slightly different data sets: red – the RCS chronology calculated from the CRU archive (with the 12 picked cores); black – the RCS chronology calculated using the Schweingruber Yamal sample of living trees instead of the 12 picked trees used in the CRU archive. The difference is breathtaking.
I’ll say. Ding Dong the stick is dead.
This comparison to CRU archive data illustrates the most extreme example of scientific cherry-picking ever seen. As Steve writes in comments at CA:
Also keep in mind the implausibly small size of the current portion of the Yamal archive. It would be one thing if they had only sampled 10 trees and this is what they got. But they selected 10 trees out of a larger population. Because the selection yields such different results from a nearby population sample, there is a compelling prima facie argument that they’ve made biased picks. This is rebuttable. I would welcome hearing the argument on the other side. I’ve notified one dendro of the issue and requested him to assist in the interpretation of the new data (but am not very hopeful that he will speak up.)
See the complete report on this new development in the sordid story of tree ring proxies used for climate interpretation at Climate Audit. And while you are there, please give Steve a hit on the tip jar. With this revelation, he’s earned it.
The next time somebody tells you that tree rings prove we are living in the “hottest period in 2000 years” show them this graph and point them to this Climate Audit article.
How low will Hollywood go in defending Roman Polanski? Former Oscar hostess Whoopi Goldberg tries to parse the meaning of rape between rape and something called “rape-rape” — which, if you read the testimony of Polanski’s victim, Polanski literally did by raping her and then sodomizing her. Goldberg tries to argue that Polanski pled guilty to statutory rape, not actual rape, which is true, and that he served a sentence — which is absolutely false:
Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.
The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshaling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
Robert Corell, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative and reviewed the UNEP report's scientific findings, said the significant global temperature rise is likely to occur even if industrialized and developed countries enact every climate policy they have proposed at this point. The increase is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change.
Humph. Guess they've pretty much gone Full Monty with their agenda here.
Tell me: Did the models these charlatans are using predict the flattening, and subsequent cooling of Global temperatures that have occurred over the past decade? Call me when you can predict what the temperature next Thursday will be within a tenth of a degree, and MAYBE we can discuss what it will be 90 years hence...
Documents released by a Senate Republican on Thursday show that leaders of the ACORN community organizing network transferred several million dollars in charitable and government money meant for the poor to arms of the group that have political and sometimes profit-making missions.
ACORN's tax-exempt groups and allied organizations, long a target of conservative ire, used more than half their charitable and public money in 2006 to pay other ACORN affiliates, according to an analysis by the tax staff of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
On Thursday, Grassley called the transactions a "big shell game" and said ACORN donors may be surprised by how the liberal group known for helping the poor obtain housing and health care was spending their money. He urged the Internal Revenue Service to take a closer look.
According to the Grassley report, charities "are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity."
WASHINGTON – In a vote that should send chills up the spine of those satisfied with their current health insurance, Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee today rejected a Republican amendment that would allow Americans to keep their current health care coverage.
Sponsored by U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the amendment stated that the implementation of the final health care bill would not take place unless the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) was able to certify before Congress that the legislation would not cause more than 1,000,000 Americans to lose their current coverage.
The amendment was rejected 10-13, with all Republican Senators voting in favor and all Democrats voting against.
Notably, the defeat of the Hatch Amendment comes on the same week that the head of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Douglas Elmendorf, testified before Congress that seniors would see reduced Medicare benefits under the bill currently in the Finance Committee.
It also came on the same day that variousmediaaccounts highlighted the Democrats’ defense of the proposed cuts in the popular Medicare Advantage program that so many senior citizens rely upon for their health care.
“It’s inexplicable that the same Democrats who continue to insist that Americans’ current health care coverage will not be affected by the Democrats’ government-run proposal would then turn around and vote against an amendment that would ensure just that,” National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Amber Wilkerson Marchand said today. “Blanche Lincoln needs to level with her constituents, especially the senior citizens in her state who the head of the CBO said will see deep Medicare cuts in the Democrat proposal: will they get to keep their current health care coverage, and if so, why did she vote against legislation that would ensure such a provision will be included in the final bill?”
The American people are more than just a little sick of being lied to and cheated by their politicians. Barack Obama remains defiant, trivializing historic protests taking place throughout the nation.
In his most recent PR thrust, this past Friday, he brushed the national fury aside, describing it as typical right-left drivel, and likened himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR, of course, instituted a number of socialist programs, many of which were imported from Sweden, in the face of opposition. The message was clear. Implementation of Obama’s agenda is a foregone conclusion. What the American people want and what they have to say just doesn’t matter.
That was followed by action. Back to business-as-usual on Tuesday, he addressed a group at the United Nations in a process intended to lead to a new international Cap-n-Trade agreement.
<snip>
Even while protagonists continue the propaganda campaign, an already large and still growing number of people realize that the global warming scare is a hoax. Climate change is not man-made and there is nothing we can do that would have a significant impact on global climate. Carbon dioxide, made the villain in the fake battle, is not a pollutant nor is it threatening catostrophic global warming. The threat of rising sea levels, more powerful storms and floods, droughts and crop failures, shrinking islands and climate refugees are ideas popularized by Al Gore’s work of fiction, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
"Thuban" set to hit next year and will be backwards compatible with existing boards
MaximumPC reports that it has confirmed AMD will be delivering its new six-core ThubanCPU next year. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the new six-core beast is that the CPU will be backwards compatible with existing AM3 and AM2+ mainboards.
An AMD spokesman told MaximumPC, "We are all about platform longevity and long-lived upgrade paths.” The statement was a jab at Intel who often requires new sockets when it unleashes new CPUs onto the market.
The new six-core processor is believed to be a 364mm2 processor and have 904 million transistors. For comparison, the Phenom II X4 956 BE has 758 million transistors and the Core i7 965 from Intel has 731 million transistors.
MaximumPC reports that the Thuban CPU is believed to have 3MB of L2 cache, and 6MB of L3 cache. Clock speeds are unknown, but are expected to be lower than those of the quad core parts being offered from AMD because of the increased heat output of the extra pair of cores.
The new AMD processor is not expected to beat the Intel Gulftown to store shelves. Gulftown is expected to hit stores under the Core i9 name and fit existing LGA1366 mainboards. These processors are expected to be able to handle 12 threads at once with HyperThreading enabled.
If the Senate ever does finish with a health-care overhaul bill, the next item on their agenda looks like an even bigger loser. The Congressional Budget Office, whose analyses exposed ObamaCare as a deficit-busting boondoggle, has now reviewed the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House over two months ago. The analysis confirms that cap-and-trade will seriously hamper the American economy and create joblessness by the millions over the next 40 years:
The climate change bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives would reduce the gross domestic product of the United States by as much as 3.5 percent in 2050, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
The Democratic-controlled House passed landmark legislation in June aimed at slashing industrial pollution that is blamed for global warming.
“Reducing the risk of climate change would come at some cost to the economy,” the CBO said in a reported posted on its website on Thursday.
The report concludes that if cap and trade provisions of the bill are implemented, the measure would reduce the gross domestic product by between 1 percent and 3.5 percent below what it otherwise would have been in 2050.
Read the full report here. What would the cap-and-trade bill mean for Americans? Unnecessary misery and stagnation:
The increases in the price of energy caused by the program would reduce workers’ real wages. Total employment would be lower in the long run to the extent that some workers chose to work fewer hours or not at all—but for nearly all workers, the choice in the long run would probably be to remain in the workforce and accept the prevailing wage. …
On the other hand, CBO’s estimate of the loss of purchasing power does not capture all of the ways in which the cap-and-trade program could impose costs on households. There would be transition costs of lost earnings by workers who would become temporarily unemployed or underemployed during the adjustment to higher prices for energy from fossil fuels. There would also be indirect effects on household consumption relative to what would happen in the absence of the cap-and-trade program. The premature obsolescence of existing long-lived capital, such as coal-fired power plants that would no longer generate as much electricity, would reduce household wealth a little (through shareholders’ losses) and in turn reduce consumption. Both lower household wealth and higher costs of producing energy-intensive capital goods would reduce domestic saving and investment, leading to slightly lower economic growth and household consumption. Finally, some interactions of the cap-and-trade program with existing taxes could tend to add to economic costs. For example, the increase in prices for fossil fuel energy and energy-intensive goods and services would tend to aggravate distortions in the labor market caused by existing taxes on earnings.
The loss in purchasing power would rise over time as the cap became more stringent and larger amounts of resources were dedicated to cutting emissions—for example, by generating electricity from natural gas rather than coal or by improving energy efficiency. As a share of GDP, the aggregate loss of purchasing power would be 0.1 percent in 2012 and 0.8 percent in 2050, CBO estimates, and would average 0.4 percent over the entire 2012–2050 period. Measured at the projected 2010 level of income, the average per-household loss in purchasing power would be $90 in 2012 and $925 in 2050 and would average about $455 per U.S. household per year over the 2012–2050 period.
Meanwhile, businesses would have sharp increases in compliance costs, but they won’t be the ultimate payer of those costs. The CBO estimates that households would bear the costs of 87% of the compliance costs through higher prices:
CBO estimated price increases for categories of goods and services using a model of the U.S. economy that relates final prices of goods to the costs of production inputs. Households and governments would bear those costs through their consumption of goods and services. Households account for the bulk of total spending, and they would bear an estimated 87 percent of the compliance costs.
Those compliance costs won’t be evenly distributed across all income levels, either. The CBO shows in this chart that compliance costs will eat up purchasing power most at the lowest income levels by 2020, but that “allocations” (ie, welfare and subsidies) within the bill makes them the winner. The big loser? The middle class:
Go to Hot Air to read the rest and see the scary graphs...
.... Would you please sit down and shut up you old fool!
Yup. Think about this one for a moment. You're a young black man or woman, you're finishing up your education and hope to have a career in politics. Along comes Barack Obama and you're just elated! The barrier has been broken and a black man is now President of the United States! Your path is clear!
But wait! In the early months of Obama's presidency his inexperience starts to show. He fails on several big fronts: Health care, cap-and-trade and the union card-check bill. He tries to convince the American people that he can provide health care to 30+ million Americans who are now uninsured ... and that he can do it with fewer doctors and nurses while spending less than we're spending right now ... and all this without every denying anyone the health care they may need. The American people don't buy it.
Let's see .. what else. Where do we start? He negotiates an automobile bailout plan that favors unions at the expense of secured investors. He appoints a serial tax cheat to run the Treasury Department. He starts a trade war with China. He tells our European allies that they're on their own when it comes to defense against incoming ballistic missiles .. and on and on and on.
So .. as Obama's incompetence becomes more evident; as his anti-capitalistic philosophy fleshes out before our eyes; and his lies see the light of day ... the criticisms start coming in. How do the liberals respond! Predictably, that's how. Everyone who criticizes the president is simply a racist! They just don't like a black man in the white house!
Now .. just how does this hurt future political aspirants? How does it hurt you? You already understand, don't you? The majority of voters out there are still white ... and unless you're going to be content being a mayor or city councilman in a city or district with a majority black voting base, you're going to need some votes from the white side. You know that many white voters are feeling a little shell shocked right now. Many of them voted for Obama. They thought the time had come when our country was going to move beyond race! Wouldn't that have been wonderful? But in light of recent events they think that they might have made a mistake. They did what they thought was right and certainly politically correct, and suddenly they're racists because they have voiced some disagreements with Obama policies?
So .. what happens when you try to run for office? The voters out there looking at you may have no personal problem with you at all. But there's this lingering fear ... a fear born of the likes of Jimmy Carter, James Clyburn, Maureen Dowd, Howard Dean, Newsweek Magazine, The New York Times and others ... the fear that if these voters ever find it necessary to question or to object to something you do in office, they're going to be branded racists. Who, after all, is going to want to put you in office if your skin color makes you politically bulletproof? So .. they plan to play it safe from now on. Vote for whites. At least when they screw up you can go after them without putting on a white robe and cone hat.
The race baiters aren't doing you any favors. But you knew that, didn't you?
I generally have little use for Neal Boortz, but, just wow...
Here is a list of ACORN’s crimes—take special note of number nine. 1. This is a group that was knee-deep in voter fraud during the president’s election. 2. There seems to have been zero accountability for this fraud by the group’s leadership. 3. ACORN does not appear to have any true ‘leadership’ to speak of. 4. ACORN has now been deeply embarrassed by two amateur journalists. 5. They were embarrassed because they were assisting two people—posing as a pimp and a prostitute—who wanted help getting a loan on a house to keep 13 El Salvadorian sex slaves. 6. They did these things using tax payer dollars. 7. The government—only now—seems to be moving towards fixing the problems with ACORN. Instead of prosecuting them criminally—as would certainly be done if these crimes had been perpetrated by Bank of America or JPMorgan—the government has finally decided to stop paying taxpayer dollars into this fund. 8. ACORN initially claimed that the portrayal was “false and defamatory and an attempt at gotcha journalism” and only now has put a hiring freeze on the company—a bold attempt at real reform. 9. ACORN helped start the financial crisis.
The media seems to be missing the ninth point. Many people may not know about ACORN is that when they aren’t registering voters such as Donald Duck and Abe Lincoln, they spend their time helping those who can’t afford a home to get one anyway. One of ACORN’s primary objectives is to protect against ‘predatory lending’ and to fight to help people get ‘sub-prime loans.’ The videos that have been widely publicized show heinous behavior by ACORN employees—assisting a pimp and a prostitute who need help getting a mortgage.
Now, granted, it is obscene that the pimp and prostitute were trying to get a house to hold 13 sex-slaves—but ACORN also lobbied for a broken financial system. Steve Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan institute, and a column writer for realclearmarkets.com has recently written an article bemoaning ACORN’s creation as a part of the Community Reinvestment Act. Specifically, he mentions—over and over again—that ACORN pushed for lower lending standards, in particular for minority and low income groups through ‘alternative qualifying’ programs. In other words, ACORN lobbied for the lower lending standards which led to the current financial crisis. This led to legislation against sound banking principles (including no-documentation loans, for instance).
Now, however, the government is suggesting that we should go further than ACORN, and encourage even more not-home-owners to buy homes that they cannot afford, which, as Mr. Malanga notes, ‘is sort of like arguing that the cure for alcoholism is another martini.” The government refuses to see that interference in the market causes problem—in this case, a rather major problem, which some have affectionately called the ‘great recession.’ The government’s desire for every American to own a home is bad enough—but strong-arming companies into bad business decisions ought to be illegal.
What does this say about the government’s ability to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent with care? What does this say about the government’s promises to root out fraud and abuse? In particular, if the president’s health care plan includes cutting Medicare by $500 billion, shouldn’t he cut funding to ACORN and other unmonitored groups? What does this say generally about the government’s ability to allocate resources more efficiently than the free market?
The media should take note: not only is ACORN a prostitution abetting, tax-payer funded, bureaucratic nightmare, it was also the seed of the current financial crisis. We shouldn’t be so surprised now that it’s in full bloom.
NATO-led forces are investigating the death of four Marines in eastern Afghanistan after their commanders reportedly rejected requests for artillery fire in a battle with insurgents, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
Tuesday's incident was "under investigation" and details remained unclear, press secretary Geoff Morrell told a news conference.
A McClatchy newspapers' journalist who witnessed the battle reported that a team of Marine trainers made repeated appeals for air and artillery support after being pinned down by insurgents in the village of Ganjgal in eastern Kunar province.
The U.S. troops had to wait more than an hour for attack helicopters to come to their aid and their appeal for artillery fire was rejected, with commanders citing new rules designed to avoid civilian casualties, the report said.
Morrell said the helicopters were not hampered by any restrictions on air power but had to travel a long distance to reach the Marines at the remote location near the Pakistan border.
"I think that it did take some time for close air support to arrive in this case, but this is not a result of more restrictive conditions in which it can be used," he said.
"It was the result, as is often the case in Afghanistan, of the fact that there are great distances often between bases where such assets are located and where our troops are out operating."
Morrell could not confirm whether appeals for artillery fire were denied by commanders.
According to the McClatchy report by Jonathan Landay, the U.S. advisors assisting Afghan forces had been assured before the operation that "air cover would be five minutes away."
The incident comes after the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, issued new restrictions on the use of military force and air raids in a bid to prevent civilian deaths.
Barack Obama can no more disown ACORN than he could disown his own shadow.
He IS ACORN. And ACORN is him. The “accountability&rdq uo; that White House flack Robert Gibbs says they take “extremely seriously” doesn’t extend to Team Obama itself — and the accountability they have evaded for pouring more than $800,000 into an ACORN front group for campaign advance work that was mysteriously re-classified as “get-out-the-vote&r dquo; work.
As for the ACORN “advisory committee” that will “audit” the group’s illicit activities, I repeat:
Please be advised that your Race Card account has been closed. This decision was based on your account history of excessive over-limit spending. Please destroy your card immediately as it will no longer be honored.
Sincerely, The American People
No president in history came to office with more political capital than Barack Obama. He squandered it like a lottery winner within a few months. If liberals had any sense of irony, they would appreciate the inanity of braying about racism right after America elected a black president.
Obama’s entire life has been devoted to fomenting racial animus. All of his mentors, from the rancid racist and surrogate father, Frank Marshall Davis to Fan of Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, have been rabid, whitey despising racists.
In his fictional “autobiography&rdqu o;, Obama is consumed by bigotry. He can find ersatz discrimination in nearly any situation. Even his white mother was preoccupied with race.
In Dreams, Obama describes his mother’s overly romanticized view of black Americans: “Every black man was Thurgood Marshall or Sidney Poitier; every black woman Fannie Lou Hammer or Lena Horne. To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.” (Dreams From My Father, Pg. 51).
No sensible American denies that blacks were treated abominably in the past. Slavery was a national ignominy as was segregation. It’s worth noting that Democrats have always been on the wrong side of civil rights. The Klu Klux Klan was the creation of southern Democrats. Some of us are growing weary of being charged with racism by the party that has a former Klansman serving in the senate.
Blacks have long been abused in America, but not by conservatives. The Communist Party, ever on the lookout for a group to exploit, has always cultivated interracial tension. The useful idiots on the Left rely on divide and conquer. Inciting racial antagonism contaminates the culture and destabilizes the country. Racial harmony provides no advantage to liberals and Misery Merchants. When liberals start howling about racism, the question that must always be asked is: who benefits?
If liberals really gave a damn about minorities, they would defy the teachers’ unions and support charter schools
By Brad Bumsted STATE CAPITOL REPORTER Thursday, October 30, 2008
HARRISBURG -- A fired staffer for an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now testified Wednesday the organization was provided a "donor list" from the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in late 2007 for fundraising efforts.
Anita Moncrief, a former Washington staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of the community activist group ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign.
Moncrief said she has a copy of a "development plan" that outlines how Obama contributors who had "maxed out" under federal contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote, and that it was her job to identify such contributors.
Moncrief testified for more than two hours in a Commonwealth Court hearing on a lawsuit brought by the state Republican Party, alleging voter fraud by ACORN in Philadelphia, Allegheny, Delaware and Dauphin counties.
The action mirrors efforts by GOP presidential nominee John McCain and national Republicans to discredit ACORN and attempt to tie Obama to the group.
The state lawsuit against ACORN, its affiliates and Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes asks the court for a preliminary injunction. GOP lawyers want the court to force ACORN to make its voter database available and to require voter education efforts. They want the Department of State to make its voter registration database more readily available to counties, something a Department of State lawyer said Pennsylvania does.
Millions of Americans are marching, blogging, calling Congress, E-mailing friends, and writing to newspapers to say that President Obama and Congress are expanding government too far, too fast. We need to do more, because it’s clear that they’re not getting the message. The latest example: the House of Representatives is preparing to put the Department of Education into the business of creating educational curriculum for American students.
This week the House is scheduled to approve H.R. 3221, an education lending bill that CBO reports will increase the deficit by $50 billion. The bill includes a little-known provision to give the Secretary of Education $500 million - to be provided to to any entity he deems “appropriate” - to develop and disseminate free and “freely available” online courses.
This is unprecedented.
Federal curriculum is contrary to longstanding government policy - and it’s unnecessary. For decades, Federal law has prohibited the U.S. Department of Education from exercising control over the “curriculum, program of instruction . . . or over the selection or content of library resources, text books, or other educational materials by any educational institution or school system.”
Now the Obama Administration and Congress are poised to provide the Secretary of the Education half a billion dollars, and give him the authority to enter into contracts with any entity he deems “appropriate” to “develop, evaluate and disseminate” “freely available” “education courses.”
Why?
This provision comes under ‘open online education’ in the bill. But if the only goal is to expand online education, why not encourage states and districts to do that? They are already in the business of creating course curriculum. Why break decades (actually, centuries) of precedent, and allow the federal government to design course curriculum for the first time? And lastly, why give that authority with no guidelines whatsoever as to what groups qualify for the money?
On the Internet, there is a famous principle that has come to be known as Godwin's Law. Named after columnist Mike Godwin, the Godwin Law states that as Internet discussions grow longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler (whether legitimate or illegitimate) approaches. Anyone who has spent any time browsing the blogosphere can verify Godwin's Law.
Anyone who pays any attention to the trials and tribulations of President Obama can recognize the existence of another law. Call it Shapiro's Law: As any conversation involving an Obama supporter grows longer, the probability of the Obama supporter citing the failings of President Bush approaches. In fact, Obama supporters rarely wait longer than 30 seconds before referencing President Bush's shortcomings. President Obama himself talks about President Bush more than FDR, JFK, Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. combined.
Why do Obama supporters believe that President Bush's weaknesses excuse President Obama's total incompetence? When you mention that President Obama has driven the national debt to unprecedented levels, they mention that the Bush administration spent too much, too. When you mention that President Obama has nationalized industries and seeks to subvert private health care, they mention that President Bush passed an expansion of drug benefits and sponsored bailouts of the financial firms.
This is utterly illogical.
If O.J. Simpson had committed double-homicide, then cited Ted Kennedy's manslaughter as justification, we would have scoffed. Yet we are supposed to accept "Ignore Obama, Bush was horrible" sloganeering as the apotheosis of argumentative rhetoric.
<snip>
It is time for Obama and his followers to grow up and stop proving living embodiments of Shapiro's Law. Bush has not been in office for nine months. Democrats have controlled Congress for three years. If Obama can't defend his policies rationally, he should change them. If he can, he should defend them. George W. Bush has nothing to do with anything anymore.
The federal government’s consolidation of power along with out-of-control spending is a malignant tumor in America’s body.
Strong & drastic treatment needs to be introduced now. Here’s what can be given to our patient for its critical condition:
Force Congress to take its own medicine
Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana’s 4th District is supporting House Resolution 615 to force members of Congress to join the same health care system the government is forcing down America’s throat. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Prevent the Notre Dame Scandal from happening again
Notre Dame fell into relativism because it rejected Church teaching as the authentic interpreter of moral law. The Cardinal Newman Society was the basis for most bishops’ opposition to the Notre Dame Commencement scandal. Concepts such as right and wrong are still absolute.
Change the tide across America now
Across America, real conservatives (not GOP establishment RINOs) are taking back what was lost in the last couple of years, one seat at a time in special elections. That’s what is needed to be done to save America for future generations. Find out who’s running in your back yard and support them.
Talk about illegal immigration at town hall & health care meetings
A new Rasmussen Report shows 83% of Americans say illegal aliens should not have access to government health care subsidies. Remind Senator Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Congress that any promised AMNESTY legislation introduced after Labor Day won’t be tolerated! Stop this unpopular elitist move. Note: Starting Sept 9, 2009, the regulation mandating that federal contractors use E-Verify is in effect!
Obama’s Diversity Czar
What can you do to protect your constitutional and civil rights? The answer is Gary Kreep, Director of the United States Justice Foundation. This public interest group is fighting back against the lies and boycotts of enemies of free speech. Obama has nationalized the auto industry, major banks, insurance companies, and health care is next on his political dance card. He’ll do the same to our constitutional and civil rights, if you let him get away with it.
Trillions of dollars stolen from the U.S. taxpayer
The time is perfect to unleash MILLIONS of outraged Americans on the Federal Reserve Board. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) and Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) have a bill before Congress to do just that. Known as HR 1207 & S 604 or “Audit the Fed”, this will force the hand of Congress to Audit this institution. With Congress spending TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars and the Federal Reserve literally printing money out of thin air, it’s never been more important for me and you.
Obama’s Radicalism
David Horowitz is writing a new booklet to blanket college campuses as the new school year starts. This booklet, “Alinsky’s Rules for Obama’s Radicalism” paints a clear picture of Obama’s agenda for our nation. A prepared advertisement is ready to run in papers around the country calling on Americans to derail this train. Please support this before it’s too late.
The birth certificate movie every American must see
Having trouble making sense of the whole Obama birth certificate issue? Concerned about constitutional eligibility requirements? Looking for a way to educate your friends and family members? Want to get the straight facts from the investigative reporting team that put this issue on the map? Check out the DVD documentary on one of the hottest issues in America – “A Question of Eligibility”. Note: A California judge has tentatively scheduled a trial for Jan. 26, 2010,for a case that challenges Obama’s eligibility to be president based on questions over his qualifications under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.
Tea parties march on
If you had fun at the April 15th Tax Day & July 4 Tea Parties, just wait till after the Sept. 12 Washington, D.C. party! Donate whatever you can to these organizations, your talent, time or money. Remember; they don’t get federal funding or government bailouts. Support your local tea party movements, especially in the Texas areas. Invite friends, neighbors, everyone you know to attend these events!
Note worthy: Three Republican Senators (Charles Grassley, Mike Enzi and Olympia Snowe) have been meeting with Democrats behind closed doors in an attempt to strike a deal on Obama Care. And if successful, their actions will effectively lead to government-run health care for all.
An American "Reaper" flying hunter-killer robot assassin rebelled against its human controllers above Afghanistan on Sunday, and a manned US fighter jet was forced to shoot the rogue machine down before it unilaterally invaded a neighbouring country.
The Reaper, aka MQ-9 or Predator-B, is a large five-ton turboprop powered machine able to carry up to 14 Hellfire missiles - each capable of destroying a tank or flattening a building. It is used by the US and British forces above Afghanistan as a "persistent hunter-killer against emerging targets".
The aircraft was flying a combat mission when positive control of the MQ-9 was lost. When the aircraft remained on a course that would depart Afghanistan's airspace, a US Air Force manned aircraft took proactive measures to down the Reaper in a remote area of northern Afghanistan.
The statement goes on to say that the errant killdroid "impacted the side of a mountain" and that there "were no reports of civilian injuries".
USAFCENT don't specify just what manned jet went up against the mutinous machine, or what methods the pilot used. However the logical choice would be a fighter plane - probably an F-15, -16 or -18 - and the cheapest and most fun weapon to use would be cannon fire. Opposition from the Reaper wouldn't be an issue, as it is a low-performance aircraft compared to a jet fighter and has no air-to-air capability.
It wasn't clear from the US military announcement whether the erratic death-bot had turned on its masters and was planning an attack on critical US logistics bases located north of the Afghan border, or whether it had sickened of reaping hapless fleshies like corn and was hoping merely to escape. Alternatively the machine assassin may merely have succumbed to boredom or - just possibly - a mundane, non-anthropomorphic technical fault of some kind.
"On September 13, 2009, MILNET became self-aware..."
Democrats already have a problem with coal-producing states over their cap-and-trade bill, and Harry Reid will likely find the Senate Democrats from those states less than enthused about killing their local economies. Senators from agricultural states may want to take a close look, too. A new study shows that, while some farmers may gain in the short term through the sale of carbon credits, the cap-and-trade system will hurt a wide swath of the American agricultural sector:
A new study making the rounds of Capitol Hill shows Iowa farms could potentially benefit from a cap-and-trade bill passed by the House to reduce carbon emissions.
However, the study shows many types of farms in other areas of the country are likely to lose money under the legislation.
The study was done by economists at Texas A&M University who analyzed the impact of government policies on representative farms around the country. The finding: Seventy-one of 98 model crop and livestock operations would see their cash reserves decline by 2016 under the House-passed cap-and-trade bill, even with the opportunity for farms to earn money from carbon credits. Virtually all rice, cotton, dairy and cattle farms modeled in the study stand to make little or nothing from the credits and would lose money under the bill.
Why would Iowa farms gain? The bill helps corn farmers, more than likely due to its support for ethanol production. Farmers in the upper Midwest have benefited from the higher prices of corn, even though those higher prices led to starvation and increased poverty. Despite the growing evidence that ethanol expands misery rather than reduces it, Barack Obama continues to be joined at the hip to the ethanol lobby.
For the rest of us, higher costs to farmers mean higher costs at the grocery store. We can expect to see increases in many staples, such as beef, milk, and rice. Clothes will become more expensive as cotton prices go up. This comes on top of the higher costs of energy we’ll all be paying separately, as well as the price increases that come from fuel price increases in the distribution chain that brings all of these good to market.
“First, do no harm” has been the guiding philosophy for the medical profession since Hippocrates. It still dominates medical science, technology, and clinical practice. That is why I trust my doctor to do his or her best for me, and that is why at times I have changed doctors when I thought they fell short of that standard.
That is why the cost of developing one medication to FDA standards is about a billion dollars. Entire technical professions have grown up over the past century, dedicated to finding and developing new medical molecules with remarkable sophistication. They are constantly testing thousands of promising drugs, digging into life’s basic biochemical pathways, and finding ways to make precise changes in body chemistry to save lives. We benefit from that extraordinary science every time we take an aspirin.
It’s an amazing success story, and by far most people in it are personally admirable and dedicated. Needless to say, our pop media understands nothing about it. Sheer ignorance is a big reason the media and political elites can’t think straight about medical care. They just don’t understand even the basics. There are no scientists, no engineers, and few physicians in Congress.
We live in an amazingly arrogant age, at least in politics and the more self-indulgent fields of academia.
Obama is a product of the non-scientific academic world, where Marxist pseudo-philosophy is popular, as long as the colleges themselves can live off the fat of the (capitalist) land. Our academics are revolutionaries who never take a personal risk, just like our Democrats. That’s why the philosophy behind Obama’s Marxoid takeover of our health care seems to be:
Who cares if we do harm? We’ll fix it later! If it’s politically convenient! Whatever we do cannot hurt the apparatchiks, the ruling elite, who will have their own medical system.
Congress and federal bureaucrats will keep their current insurance plans. Academics will keep their tenure and their soft lifestyle at the expense of taxpayers. It’ll be a two-layered system straight out of Soviet Moscow: the nomenklatura versus the workers.
ObamaCare is really, really cheap compared to that one billion dollars for testing a single drug. The cost of testing and developing HR 3200, the current and ever-changing plan for ObamaCare, is zero dollars — because no testing and development has ever been done on more than 1,000 complicated pages. The bill has been thrown together in back-room deals between lobbyists and staffers in Congress. It’s like a hugely complex computer program that’s never been tested to see if it will run.
How likely is it to work? It won’t, which is why there will be tens of thousands of pages of regulations. And if it runs, how likely is it to make one-sixth of the U.S. economy cheaper and better, as Obama claims?
This is the ultimate snake oil.
ObamaCare is a really sweet deal – if you believe in abysmal ignorance and wild guesswork as a basis for turning over control of a half-trillion-dollar-per- year medical system to a Central Committee of Wise Heads. No sane real-world organization could work this way. But power has its perks, and one of them is to dictate a revolution in the United States without ever trying to understand its consequences.
If Obama were running a drug company he would be criminally liable for fraud. Morally he is no different from a drug maker who skips all the testing, peddling thalidomide around 1960, when 10 to 20 thousand people died from a poorly tested drug.
Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.
The videotape was made public Thursday on BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.
In the videotape, made on July 24, James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named "Kenya" who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN's office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.
ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — bills itself as the nation's largest community of low- and moderate-income families "working together for social justice and stronger communities," according to its Web site. The organization has been accused by Republicans and conservative activists with fraud in voter registration drives around the country and has been under fire since last year for its support of President Obama and for its planned participation in next year's census.
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A spokesman for ACORN, Scott Levenson, when asked to comment on the videotape, said: "The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at gotcha journalism. This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further."
On the videotape, "Kenya" can be seen telling an ACORN staffer that she earns roughly $8,000 a month. The ACORN employee then suggests to "Kenya" that ACORN could submit a tax return for 2008 showing that she made $9,600 for the entire year — instead of $96,000 — and that ACORN would charge "Kenya" $50 instead of the usual $150 fee for preparing her taxes.
ACORN offers tax preparation and benefits application services free of charge during tax season; it charges nominal fees during non-tax season.
The ACORN staffer can also be seen suggesting that the prostitute list her occupation as a freelance "performing artist."
"It's not dancing, trust me," the "pimp" says.
"But dancing is considered an art," the ACORN staffer replies. "[Exotic dancers] usually go under performing artists, or yeah, they usually go under performing arts, which will be what you are — a performing artist."
The "pimp" later says that he and "Kenya" plan to bring up to 13 "very young" girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. Although an ACORN staffer points out their plans are illegal, she also suggests that the girls can be claimed as dependents.
"What if they are going to be making money because they are performing tricks too?" the pimp says.
"If they making money and they are underage, then you shouldn't be letting anybody know anyway," the ACORN staffer says, and laughs. "It's illegal. So I am not hearing this, I am not hearing this. You talk too much. Don't give up no information you're not asked."
MONTGOMERY | The popular Cash for Clunkers program helped new car dealers, but it is dramatically raising the price of relatively inexpensive used cars, hurting the poor, dealers say.
The Car Allowance Rebate System, commonly called Cash for Clunkers, took 690,000 operable cars out of the market, which is beginning to reflect effects of the shortage.
A smaller supply of used cars over the next six months will affect the auto parts market that lower-income drivers and hobbyists rely on to keep their older cars running.
Ronnie Watkins is a Ford dealer in Gadsden. He said he told his car buyers not to even attend a recent auto auction for used cars because prices have gone up.
“I bought 20 Ford Fusions from a wholesaler about 3 weeks ago,” Watkins said. “This car has now gone up over $1,000.”
Greg Peeples is general manager of Leigh Automotive Mercedes-Benz dealership in Tuscaloosa. “Prices are up and there is definitely a shortage of used cars,” he said Thursday.
Peeple said because so many new cars were sold in Cash for Clunkers and are only slowly being replaced, dealers needing more used cars are finding them going up in price. At this time of year when the model year changes used car prices usually go down.
“What is going to happen at this dealership and dealerships throughout the country is used cars are in short supply by taking 700,000 out of circulation,” Watkins. “It takes away from the ‘buy here and pay here’ lots.”
When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers must find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well..
Wall street, and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of “tough decision”, and his board of directors gives him a big bonus.
Our government should not be immune from similar risks.
Therefore: Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members. Reduce Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Then, reduce their staff by 25%.
Accomplish this over the next 8 years (two steps/two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.
Some Yearly Monetary Gains Include:
$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165,200 pay/member/ yr.)
$97,175,000 for elimination of their staff. (estimate $1.3 Million in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Million in staff per each member of the Senate every year)
$240,294 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.
$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork barrel ear-marks each year. (those members whose jobs are gone. Current estimates for 20 total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion/yr)
The remaining representatives would need to work smarter and improve efficiencies. It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country!
We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well. It might even be easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.
Congress has more tools available to do their jobs than it had back in 1911 when the current number of representatives was established. (telephone, computers, cell phones to name a few)
Note: Congress did not hesitate to head home when it was a holiday, when the nation needed a real fix to the economic problems. Also, we had 3 senators that weren’t doing their jobs while on the campaign trail and still they all accepted full pay. These facts alone support a reduction in senators & congress.
Summary of opportunity:
$ 44,108,400 reduction of congress members.
$282,100, 000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.
$150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.
$59,675,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining house members.
$37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining senate members.
$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.
$8,073,383,400 per year, estimated total savings. (that’s 8-BILLION just to start!)
Big business does these types of cuts all the time.
If Congresspersons were required to serve 20, 25 or 30 years (like everyone else) in order to collect retirement benefits, tax payers could save a bundle. Now they get full retirement after serving only ONE term.
There is no more mystery about Van Jones. He was a passionate defender of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal, a self-satisfied and described "Communist," a supporter of the destruction of the Jewish state, and a promoter of the theory that the Katrina tragedy was a white racist plot, and so forth. That's okay with Democratic chairman Howard Dean, and Obama's Environmental Quality Council head Nancy Sutley. (See Ron Radosh's current blog for chapter and verse, and also the many blogs on Jones at our own www.newsrealblog.com.) This should surprise no one. The recent heads of the black caucus in the House -- part of the 120 member "progressive caucus" -- have all been Castro-loving racists -- Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee to name two off the top of my head. Diane Watson is probably next. The Democratic Party today is a "popular front" organization (to pluck an appropriate term from the 1930s when liberals and Stalinists lined up together as well). There are no scoundrels, America haters, racists -- that Democrats won't assimilate. One of the more obnoxious racists and crooks in public life -- Charlie Rangel -- is still chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee because Nancy Pelosi can't remove him, so strong is his support in her party.
And if you don't believe how far left the Democrats have lurched when I say it, here's authentication from Alan Colmes who, after ignoring all the evidence about who Van Jones actually is and what he believes, and pretending that it's all a Glenn Beck-World Net Daily-Horowitz plot, concludes "Van Jones is a mainstream liberal." That's exactly right Alan. And that's exactly the problem.
How did things get to this pass? Let me just single out one problem, because it's the one conservatives can actually affect. And that is to start calling things by their right names. The timidity and cowardice of Republicans towards Democratic Party outrages of this nature is a principal culprit. When you call Communists "liberals," it legitimizes them. The time has come to stop it. To stop the charade, stick your head out the window and say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
In breaking news today, we are starting to get a taste of how Democrats are going to penalize you if you don't buy health insurance. Sen. Baucus is proposing fining American families up to $3,800 for not buying health insurance. After the Democrat healthcare plan passes, it may become cheaper to renounce your citizenship and live here as an illegal alien.
Of course, Republicans can't really make too much noise, since they almost put Mitt Romney forward as their Presidential candidate. The only difference between Romney's healthcare plan in Massachusetts and Baucus' plan is that Romney's didn't violate the Federal Constitution.
Obama said some great things in his speech to schoolkids today. If I didn't know any better, I would think he was a Conservative Republican. It got me thinking. Perhaps we are focused on the wrong type of reform. Democrats love to talk about the 47 million uninsured, give or take. Apparently the CBO says it could vary by 10 million in either direction on any given day. This number may be true, but it is misleading. It counts illegal aliens, those who make more than $50,000 a year but choose to not buy health insurance, those who are between insurances, and those who are eligible for state and federal assistance already but don't take advantage of it. It also counts those who are young, in excellent health, and just might not need full coverage insurance.
We definitely need to find constitutional ways to provide healthcare for those who truly cannot afford it and have no access. But before we throw the Constitution in the garbage and completely remake our healthcare system to be more like Andorra's (fourth best healthcare nation in the world, according to the World Health Organization), maybe we should consider personal health insurance reform. Consider the following personal reforms:
Set your healthcare and the healthcare of your family as a priority. How often have we seen it? The overweight person on the evening news with a cigarette in their hand telling about how bad they have it and how they need national healthcare. Do they really care about their healthcare?
BlueCross BlueShield is now boasting health insurance plans starting lower than $30 a month. If you are looking for something more comprehensive, you can go to ehealthinsurance.com and shop around. I added two kids to my family and got some quotes and for more than bare bones I could expect to pay $300 a month on average. So let's go with that number.
So let's look at your finances. Do you smoke? Tobaccofreekids.org estimates the cost of a pack of cigarettes to be an average of $5.29 in the US. So let's say you smoke three packs a week. Quit smoking and you can save about $60 a month. Get your spouse to quit too and you are almost halfway to being able to afford health insurance.
Do you drink regularly? Beer is about $1 a can. Skip a beer every night. You just saved another $30 a month. If your spouse skips as well, you have saved $180 a month just from quitting smoking and cutting back on the beers.
How much do you spend on Cable TV? Is that really worth more than your health? If you have cheap basic cable you can save $10 a month. If you have good cable tv and no health insurance, shame on you. However, that aside, you can save up to $130 a month by cutting back on your cable, depending on how good it is. Congratulations, now you can afford health insurance and I don't have to buy it for you.
Library cards are free. At your local library you can get books, movies, music, and all sorts of other forms of entertainment. You can get the internet at the Library. How much would that save you?
WASHINGTON - Taxpayers face losses on a significant portion of the $81 billion in government aid provided to the auto industry, an oversight panel said in a report to be released Wednesday.
The Congressional Oversight Panel did not provide an estimate of the projected loss in its latest monthly report on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. But it said most of the $23 billion initially provided to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC late last year is unlikely to be repaid.
"I think they drove a very hard bargain," said Elizabeth Warren, the panel's chairwoman and a law professor at Harvard University, referring to the Obama administration's Treasury Department. "But it may not be enough."
The prospect of recovering the government's assistance to GM and Chrysler is heavily dependent on shares of the two companies rising to unprecedented levels, the report said. The government owns 10 percent of Chrysler and 61 percent of GM. The two companies are currently private but are expected to issue stock, in GM's case by next year.
The shares "will have to appreciate sharply" for taxpayers to get their money back, the report said.
For example, GM's market value would have to reach $67.6 billion, the report said, a "highly optimistic" estimate and more than the $57.2 billion GM was worth at the height of its share value in April 2008. And in the case of Chrysler, about $5.4 billion of the $14.3 billion provided to the company is "highly unlikely" to ever be repaid, the panel said.
Treasury Department officials have acknowledged that most of the $23 billion provided by the Bush administration is likely to be lost. But Meg Reilly, a department spokeswoman, said there is a "reasonably high probability of the return of most or all of the government funding" that was provided to assist GM and Chrysler with their restructurings.
Administration officials have previously said they want to maximize taxpayers' return on the investment but want to dispose of the government's ownership interests as soon as practicable. (sic)
A stranger stood at the Gates of hell And the Devil himself answered the bell. He looked him over from head to toe And said: My friend, I'd like to know What you have done in the line of sin To entitle you to come within?
Then Franklin D, with his usual guile Stepped forth with his toothy smile and said:
"When I took charge in '33 A nations faith was mine," said he "I promised them this and I promised them that And I calmed them down with a fireside chat. I spent their money in fishing trips And fished from the decks of their battleships.
I gave them jobs in the WPA Then raised their taxes and took it away. I raised their wages and closed their shops I killed their pigs and buried their crops I double-crossed both old and young And still the folks my praises sung. I taxed it so high they couldn't drink. I furnished 'em money with Government loans When they missed a payment I took their homes. When I wanted to punish the folks, you know I'd put my wife on the radio.
I paid them to let their farms lie still And imported foodstuffs from Brazil. I curtailed crops when I felt real mean And shipped in crops from the Argentine.
When they started to worry, stew and fret I got them to chant the alphabet With the AAA and the NLB The WPA and the CCC.
With these many units I got their goats And still I crammed it down their throats. My workers worked with the speed of snails While the taxpayers chewed their fingernails.
When the organization needed dough I closed their plants with the CIO. I ruined jobs, I ruined health And I put the screws on the rich man's wealth.
And some who couldn't stand the gaff Would call on me and how I'd laugh. When they got too strong on certain things I'd pack and head for "Ole Warm Springs." I ruined their country, their homes and then I placed the blame on "Nine Old Men."
Now Franklin talked both long and loud And the devil stood and his head he bowed. At last he said: "Lets make it clear You'll have to move, you can't stay here For once you mingle with this mob, I'll have to find another job."
The total is just under the revised $3-billion budget for the four-week program.
The new survey by CNW Purchase Path, of Bandon, Oregon, finds that of nearly 1,000 Cash for Clunkers participants, 17 percent say they have some or serious doubts that they should have made the new-vehicle acquisition.
"Primary reason: They are now facing a $275-$350-per-month car payment that didn't exist prior to acquiring the car or truck," said the report. "That amount, they say, could negatively impact the total family budget more than expected prior to buying the new vehicle."
In contrast, buyers' remorse hits about 6-8 percent of new-vehicle buyers within a month, said CNW Purchase Path.
I REALLY wish the government would stop subsidising stupid...
The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president's school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," the Post reported.
With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"
Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech. "The hearing this morning is to really examine the expenditure of $26,750 of the Department of Education funds to produce and televise an appearance by President Bush at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, DC," Ford began. "As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event."
Unfortunately for Ford, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly. "The speech itself and the use of the department's funds to support it, including the cost of the production contract, appear to be legal," the GAO wrote in a letter to Chairman Ford. "The speech also does not appear to have violated the restrictions on the use of appropriations for publicity and propaganda."
That didn't stop Democratic allies from taking their own shots at Bush. The National Education Association denounced the speech, saying it "cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers' money on a staged media event at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. -- while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters."
Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush's speech itself, like Obama's today, was entirely unremarkable. "Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart," the president told students. "If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they're stuck in a dead end job. Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.
As the health care debate rages, many conservatives have correctly argued that government-run “universal care” will lead to medical rationing. To control costs, the socialized health systems of Canada and Great Britain routinely restrict patients’ access to expensive services. A Canadian with a possible brain tumor might wait months for his government-approved MRI scan, whereas an American can receive one within days.
Liberals will typically counter that a free market is just “another form of rationing” — but by price rather than government decree. It is unjust, they say, that patients with money (or good insurance) can receive MRI scans whereas those without money cannot. Hence, they contend, the government must intervene to guarantee a supposedly fair distribution of medical services.
Too often, conservatives then concede this moral high ground to the liberals and defend the free market on purely economic grounds — e.g., a free market would lower costs for everyone. This is a serious mistake. Supporters of the free market should not allow opponents to characterize the marketplace as a form of rationing, let alone an unjust one. Instead, supporters should defend the free market as morally just because it respects individual rights.
To do so, one must properly define “rationing.” As the writer Ayn Rand noted:
“Rationing” has a specific meaning of its own. It means: to distribute in a certain particular manner — by the decision of an absolute authority, with the recipients having no choice whatever about what they receive; it also means that all the recipients involved have an equal claim to that which is being rationed, and are entitled to an equal share.
Examples include sugar rationing during World War II and gasoline rationing during the 1973 oil crisis, when the government dictated the terms and conditions of sugar or gasoline sales.
But in a free society, the government should not be regulating such sales at all. Producers — not the government — created the sugar (or gasoline) in the first place. Hence, they have the moral right to sell it to willing consumers on any mutually acceptable terms. There is no “just” distribution of sugar or gasoline apart from the voluntary exchanges between producers and consumers in a free market.
Death Wish: Lomborg's 'Copenhagen Consensus' Tainted By Inclusion of Nobel-Winner Who 'Wished' for 'tornadoes' and 'a lot of horrid things' to convince Americans of climate threat!
Economist Thomas Schelling: 'You have to find ways to exaggerate the threat'
The important work of Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg's “Copenhagen Consensus” panel is being marred by the inclusion of Nobel Winning Economist Thomas Schelling. Schelling, in a moment of sheer lunacy or candor, depending on your viewpoint, wished for “tornadoes” and “a lot of horrid things” to convince Americans of a global warming threat in a July 14, 2009 interview with The Atlantic. Schelling also advocated "exaggerating" man-made climate fears in order to scare the public. "You have to find ways to exaggerate the threat," Schelling said.
Schelling excerpt: “...And what I don't know is whether Americans are really willing to understand that and do anything for the benefit of the unborn Chinese. It's a tough sell. And probably you have to find ways to exaggerate the threat. And you can in fact find ways to make the threat serious. [...]
But I tend to be rather pessimistic. I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening -- you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth -- that would get people very concerned about climate change. But I don't think that's going to happen." [End Schelling Excerpt.]
Schelling's climate views echo those on the extreme fringe of the climate debate.
Many questions need to be asked:
Why is Lomborg holding Schelling up as some kind of sage on climate and policy when he is espousing such anti-science views?
Mr. Lomborg needs to publicly repudiate Schelling's comments and seriously consider removing him from the respected “Copenhagen Consensus” team.
Mr. Lomborg needs to address this issue ASAP in order to preserve the integrity of his critically important “Copenhagen Consensus” efforts.
'It's not even science any more, it's anti-science'
Schelling's views are exactly what UK Scientist Dr. David Bellamy referred to in November 2008. Bellamy, who used to believe in man-made climate fears, but recently reversed himself after new peer-reviewed studies and data came to light, characterized the latest global warming science like this: “The science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it's not even science any more, it's anti-science. There is absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide is anything to do with any impending catastrophe.”
Professor Roger Pielke Jr. a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, also wrote about Schelling's anti-science views on August 14, 2009, in an article titled “Are Some Thoughts Best Left Unsaid?”
Pielke wrote that Schellng explained “why politicians need to exaggerate the threat of global warming and why he hopes for massive disasters.”
Mr. Lomborg needs to address the fact that one of his panelists has degenerated into promoting nothing more than “anti-science&rdquo ; propaganda.
Now swallow your nice ObamaCare... it only tastes yucky for a second. No, don't throw it up! Now look what you did! Mommy will have to clean up after you. Again.
Is there something disquieting about a president who only wants to spread love and compassion to all Americans -- or else? Or else he'll hate us forever? Or else he'll put us in jail? Or else he'll stamp his feet and cry?
That's the feeling I'm getting. He is so intent on doing us all a big favor. ObamaCare is Just and Right and Compassionate --- and it has nothing to do with empowering the Left for the next generation and turning everybody else into Russian serfs. Nothing at all. There's no self-interest in this man and his benevolent friends from Chicago. They do whatever they do purely out of love for all of humanity. (And even out of love for all animality, according to Green Czar Van Jones. It's not clear whether Mr. Jones's compassion also extends to the plant kingdom, and maybe to bacteria and prion particles, but it could, it could. Seriously. These folks have really really big hearts.).
If some used car salesman keeps ringing your doorbell and phoning you at home and spamming your email, and just will not stop trying to sell you the same old lousy clunker -- after a while you might start to think that he's not that interested in serving your needs. You might even think he's after your wallet or your daughter. Or your life savings. Whatever. Something other than trying to do you the favor of a lifetime. Only saints are unselfish, you might think, and the Catholic Church -- which figured out all the angles on sainthood a long time ago -- just waits for a reputed saint to die for sure before deciding whether to put the official stamp on their saintliness. Living saints are nothing but trouble.
Of course we know Democrats are compassionate -- they keep telling us so, and the media do, too. Those good people cannot tell a lie, so they must be telling the truth. Democrats have this sainthood thing down pat, and Obama even sounds like the Voice of God, with all those cathedral echoes. We used to think it was Charlton Heston, but now we know it's Obama.
Nonetheless, I still get this shivery feeling when I see all the Dems in rowdy pursuit of compassion and saintliness, in between Waitress Sandwiches and secret deals with mortgage bankers. I know it's all for our own good. I know it's going to actually save us money to add those forty seven million people to our free medical care. I know they will never, ever guilt-trip us ever again, once we give in on this one. I just get this weird shivery feeling when I see Obama pushing, pushing, pushing that nice cod liver oil down our unwilling throats.
It's just like being a little kid again and having to swallow that disgusting cod liver oil ... or warm milk with the skin still on top ... or (gulp!) spinach ... and having your little sister make faces at you ... trying to down that big horse pill ... oh, yuuuuuuuuuckkkkkk...
How can the explosion of retail health-care clinics point the direction of real reform for our health-care system? In my latest column for American Issues Project, I look at the implications of two studies done by the Rand Corporation on the impact of these cash-basis clinics in shopping malls and big-box retailers like Target and Wal-Mart in my state of Minnesota. Not only do these clinics outperform traditional doctors’ offices and urgent care centers in customer satisfaction, but they also cost less — and compete for customers by using price transparency:
When it came to fees, the results were even more dramatic. For the various kinds of services studied, the average visit to a retail clinic cost $110, versus $156 for urgent care and $166 for a family doc. As for ERs? A cool $570. While even $110 for a clinic visit seems pricey, that is only the average for the three procedures studied. Minute Clinic, the industry leader with 514 outlets, charges just $62 for a minor illness or injury exam and $20 to $66 for a wellness or prevention visit.
Average cost per lab test in the Rand study also differed significantly depending on the provider: $15 at retail clinics, $27 at urgent-care facilities, $33 at doctors’ offices and a whopping $113 at the ER. The study did not bear out the fear that retail clinics would be inclined to overprescribe drugs, and when the clinics did write a prescription, the out-of-pocket cost was lower: $21 compared to a high of $26 for ERs.
What does this mean for reform? The success of retail clinics should herald an effort to get insurers and other third-party payers out of the way to restore price transparency, and put insurance back in the business of catastrophic coverage:
In 2007, the Minnesota Department of Health estimate for premiums paid per person in the state was $3,627, or about $302 per month. With that money, consumers could have visited clinics for one wellness visit and three illness or injury visits every month and still have had money remaining at the end of the year. For myself, a Type II diabetic with an easily-managed thyroid condition, I would need at a minimum two wellness visits and one blood lab every year, which would cost at most about $300 for the entire year. I would have $3300 left over to spend on other priorities each year rather than paying into an insurance pool.
Verum Serum, which tipped me to the Rand studies, thinks along the same lines:
But what this study shows so clearly is that the marketplace is already in the process of addressing the need for cheaper, better, more equitable primary care. It’s doing this by decentralizing the system, i.e. simple problems can be handled farther away from the hub (and expense) of hospitals and doctor’s offices by nurse practitioners who cost less to train and therefore less to employee.
Inevitably, this leaves doctors and hospitals free to focus on more serious problems instead of wasting their $200K education looking at sore throats and ear infections. Reduced demand on doctor’s offices and hospitals will also force doctors to begin competing for patients. Competition will drive prices down.
In short, you have the beginnings of a better system, one that doesn’t require excessive government regulation of the marketplace or a complete takeover of the insurance industry. One that doesn’t lead to rationing or long wait times to see a care provider. One that relies on decentralization, rather than centralization.
Be sure to read all of John’s post, and of course the rest of my column.
