Clear Lake Republicans

Did the Federal Government Enable the Gulf Oil Spill?

2010-05-17T13:47:00.002-05:00

An "angry" President Barack Obama lashed out at those he feels are responsible for the Gulf oil spill Friday, telling reporters in the Rose Garden: "You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. I will not tolerate any more finger-pointing or irresponsibility." But as CBS News' Chip Reid points out: "Mr. Obama's been president for nearly 16 months. Does he get at least a little piece of the blame?"
Pointing to President Obama's staunch defense of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Reid answered his own question: "Not a bit. ... He portrayed his administration as valiantly fighting the good fight against the oil companies from day one. ...So while the president is pointing the finger of blame, he's also working hard to make sure that over time the finger doesn't do a 180."
In the President's mind the federal government apparently can do no wrong. The leading answer to every problem our nation faces is bigger, stronger, and more intrusive government regulations. But a closer look at the facts surrounding the spill shows that it was an already overly oppressive regulatory legal framework, coupled with lax enforcement, that created the mismatched incentives that led to the disaster.

The federal government is the owner of the waters where drilling takes place and bears ultimate responsibility for what happens on its property. Energy companies seeking to develop our natural resources must survive a phalanx of federal regulations before any action can be taken. For starters, any action taken by the federal government, including offshore drilling leases, requires a detailed environmental impact analysis mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

But NEPA is such a draconian law, and the process can be so slow thanks to litigation, that to get anything done the federal government often grants waivers to the NEPA process. Which is exactly what happened with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in question.Regulations also require the Interior Department to inspect rigs at regular intervals, and the Deepwater rig was supposedly inspected less than two weeks prior to the accident. The rig's emergency shutoff valve, which reportedly had a dead battery, also passed inspection just 10 days before it failed. In addition to these intrusively written but leniently enforced regulations, the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 set a $75 million liability cap beyond direct cleanup costs for any offshore oil spill. The net result of all of all these policies is a situation where nobody is responsible for safety because everybody is.
The answer to the Gulf oil spill is not a new ban on domestic energy production or more intrusive regulations. The best way to make sure future spills do not happen is make energy companies responsible for safety but to then also hold them fully responsible for any accidents. Combining liability with a responsibility for safety maintenance should minimize the likelihood of accidents by directly connecting profit motives to safe operations. It is also high time the entire NEPA process was reformed. NEPA’s pervasive application makes it highly burdensome and difficult to follow, which drives the need for waivers. As waivers become the norm, they become easier to attain even when, perhaps, they should be denied.If the Obama administration insists on micromanaging every aspect of energy production then it should also be prepared to have the finger pointed at itself when things go wrong

How the Left Really Plans to Pay for Obamacare

2010-04-07T12:27:00.002-05:00

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), over half of President Barack Obama's new $940 billion health care entitlement is paid for by price-fixing Medicare cuts. Never mind that the President's own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that these cuts would cause "roughly 20 percent" of Medicare providers to go bankrupt in Obamacare's first ten years. The CBO has to believe these cuts will happen because they are required, by law, to believe everything Congress tells them.
The American people are not. So the American people ought to know that instead of cutting doctors' Medicare reimbursement rates by 21% as required by law on April 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services froze payments at current levels until Congress could come back after Easter recess and rescind those cuts. Again. As they have done every year but one since the cuts were first enacted in 1997.
This doc fix is big enough that, if it had been included as a cost of Obamacare, it would have sent the President's bill into the red all by itself. But the half trillion dollars in Medicare cuts used to fund the rest of Obamacare are a much bigger problem. Even if we assume they all go as planned, President Obama's budget would borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010; would run a $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010; and would leave permanent deficits that top $1 trillion as late as 2020. Add on the half trillion dollars in Medicare cuts that, given Congress' track record, the American people would be naive to think will ever happen, and the federal government is looking at a pile of new debt.The left's solution to this problem has been simmering for some time now.

Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) floated the idea to The Washington Post last May. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told Charlie Rose it was "on the table" in October. And yesterday White House adviser Paul Volcker told the New York Historical Society it should be considered. The "it" here is a Value Added Tax (VAT), which is a fancy way of saying national sales tax.A VAT can be (and has been) structured in many different ways. But the real world results are always the same: higher taxes, more government spending, lower growth, fewer jobs and more special interest power.Higher Taxes: Don't believe for a second that a VAT will help offset other taxes.
International evidence clearly shows that a VAT is likely to increase the aggregate burden of government. Europeans used to only have a slightly higher tax burden than the United States. But beginning in the late 1960s, European countries began to implement VATs. Since then, the overall tax burden in Europe has climbed rapidly. And once a VAT is in place, the evidence shows that the tax rate rises over time.Higher Government Spending: Not surprisingly, with more revenues, European governments turn around and spend much more than the United States does. According to a study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, government spending grew 45 percent faster in VAT nations than in non-VAT countries.Slower Growth: According to the academic literature, there is a strong negative relationship between government spending and economic performance. In other words, more government spending means less economic growth and fewer jobs.
Economic growth is driven by individuals and entrepreneurs operating in free markets, not by Washington spending and regulations.More Power to Washington: There is one economy that would greatly benefit from a VAT: Washington, DC. No VAT could ever be levied evenly on all goods and services. Due to political considerations, a VAT in addition to current taxes would likely exempt politically sensitive items like food, clothing, health care and housing. Industries would lobby heavily for exemptions from the VAT for the economic benefits described above. This would give Congress an even larger role in picking winners and losers in the marketplace. Success would depend less on ingenuity and hard work and more on the ability to gain political favor.
Our nation faces a financial crisis. But low revenues are not the problem. Spending is. Heritage fellow Brian Riedl explains:
Real federal spending remained steady at $21,000 per household throughout the 1980s and 1990s, before President Bush hiked it to $25,000 per household. Now, President Obama has a proposed a budget that would permanently spend a staggering $32,000 per household annually – and that’s before all the baby boomers retire and add another $10,000 per household in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare costs to the bottom line.So the problem is not declining revenues, but rather a spending spree unlike any in American history. If Washington insists on spending $32,000 per household, it will have to tax $32,000 per household – an unaffordable and unfair tax burden regardless what kind of tax collects it.
Rather than tax America into permanent economic stagnation, President Obama and Congress must rein in runaway federal spending. Simply bringing real federal spending back to the $21,000 per household average that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s would balance the budget by 2012 without raising a single tax on anyone. Even returning spending to the pre-recession level of 20 percent of GDP would eliminate two-thirds of the projected 2019 budget deficit without raising taxes

Restoring the First Amendment – One Case at a Time

2010-03-30T14:53:00.003-05:00

On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck another blow towards restoring every American’s First Amendment right to engage in political speech. In SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, the court applied the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United to throw out another pernicious portion of the federal campaign finance law also known as McCain-Feingold.

SpeechNow is an unincorporated association of individuals that wanted to run independent ads in the 2008 election that supported candidates for federal office that shared their views on the First Amendment right of free speech and freedom to assemble. However, federal law limited the amount of contributions that could be made to the association because the FEC considered SpeechNow to be a political action committee or PAC. Individuals are limited to giving no more than $5,000 in contributions to a PAC in a given year.

SpeechNow argued that this contribution limit violated the First Amendment rights of its members because it limited their independent political advocacy. Why? Well, the Supreme Court has previously held that the First Amendment allows unlimited independent political expenditures by an individual. Thus, if I want to spend $50,000 of my own money taking out an ad in the Wall Street Journal urging people to vote for Senator Jefferson Smith because he is willing to filibuster pork-barrel, special interest legislation, Congress cannot limit the amount I want to spend on such political speech. There is a disclosure requirement – most people don’t realize that if you spend more than $250 on such independent advocacy, you have to report it to the FEC

However, let’s assume you didn’t have the $50,000 required to purchase a quarter page of the Wall Street Journal. But you could afford to spend $10,000 and you had four friends who were just as impressed with Senator Smith who were also willing to contribute $10,000 each. One would think, given the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and associational rights, that what one person can do in terms of political speech, several people acting together should also be able to do. Prior to this decision, however, you would have been wrong.

Those five friends acting together to buy a political ad that a single individual could legally purchase would be violating federal law and subject to severe civil and criminal penalties. The FEC, applying federal campaign finance law, would characterize those five friends as having formed a PAC. Since PAC’s are limited to no more that $5,000 a year in contributions from an individual, you and your four friends would be considered by the FEC and the Justice Department to have violated federal law by contributing $10,000 each to buy this independent political ad.

The D.C. Court of Appeals quite properly threw out these federal limitations on an association of individuals engaging in political speech and advocacy, although it upheld the disclosure requirements that apply. So SpeechNow will still have to report its independent expenditures to the FEC. In addition to being unconstitutional, making it illegal for individuals acting together to engage in political activity that any one of them could legally undertake as individuals makes no sense. The SpeechNow case is another great decision for everyone who understands that the very core of the First Amendment is the protection of the right to engage in political speech, a principle that too many in Washington who call themselves “reformers” want to override

Callegari: Washington Shouldn't Mess with Texas' Water

2010-03-10T11:52:00.001-06:00

Texas has a sovereign right, reinforced by more than a century's worth of sound public policy, over the management and control its water resources. Previous generations amended the Texas Constitution to support the conservation and development of our water resources. Over fifty ago, on the heels of an extraordinary drought, legislators created the Texas Water Development Board to ensure the continued availability of water supplies. More recently, policy leaders developed water planning processes to identify and develop the resources needed for growing domestic, agricultural, and environmental needs. Now, all of Texas' water resources, from major rivers to minor aquifers, are governed by state policies. These policies were created by Texans, for Texas, and address our unique environmental conditions while respecting private property rights. We owe this to our sovereign right over this state's water resources, and the obligations of stewardship attendant to that right. Unfortunately, several proposals percolating in Washington to expand federal authority over this nation's waters threaten Texas' right to manage and control its own water resources. The most immediate threat is entitled the Clean Water Restoration Act. The title of this bill is misleading: rather than "restore" the Clean Water Act, the bill does everything to expand it. Currently, only navigable waters of the United States are subject to the Clean Water Act's requirements. This means that if a body of water is big enough to maneuver a ship, a person must obtain a federal clean water permit before discharging water into that navigable body. These permits are not cheap. The US Supreme Court found that the average applicant for an individual permit spends 788 days and over $270,000 processing the necessary paperwork. Failure to have a permit can result in thousands of dollars in fines and even imprisonment. The Act before Congress would place all waters -- not just navigable ones -- under federal Clean Water Act regulation. If approved by federal lawmakers, owners of detention ponds, storm drains, and irrigation canals, to name a few, may need a costly federal permit. More alarmingly, Texas' cities, farmers, and even water districts will be subject to a level of regulatory control that never existed before. The Clean Water Restoration Act could be just the beginning. Another measure that Congress may consider would create a new federal bureaucracy headed by a White House water "czar" responsible for developing a national water resource policy. This draft bill, called the Sustainable Watershed Planning Act, is based on a top-down policy paradigm where federal bureaucrats could dictate water planning criteria and policies to the states. This proposed centralized approach to water planning could unilaterally usurp Texas' control over her own waters while ruining a state planning process that already works. Like a river cresting in a Texas flood, the list of federal proposals continues to grow. At the bequest of out-of-state environmental activists, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has begun its review of nearly two dozen water-related species that are indigenous to Texas -- including eleven freshwater mollusks, four salamanders, eight fish, a snail, an insect, and a crustacean -- for possible inclusion on the federal endangered species list. If approved by federal bureaucrats, these additions could jeopardize the continued availability of water to towns and farms throughout the state. Another proposal being considered at the behest of environmentalists would revise federal principles and guidelines for water resources planning to emphasize ecological goals over economic and human well-being. Further, the White House is considering amending a Carter Administration program relating to floodplain management to limit land uses along our waterways. The measures being considered in Washington would genuinely interfere with Texas' sovereignty. If approved, they would subordinate Texas' water priorities to federal decisions, and shove this state's right to manage its own water resources aside to make way for federal control and bureaucracies. This cannot happen. If Texas is to maintain her sovereignty over her water resources, our Congressional delegation needs to work with legislators from other states and Texas' own water leaders to stop these measures from being enacted. Texas has a strong tradition of stewardship over her waters. Decisions regarding this precious resource are best left to state policy-makers, and not federal bureaucrats or a Congress mired in other issues.

Representative Bill Callegari represents the west Harris County and Katy area in the Texas House of Representatives. He is currently serving his third term as Vice Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. Before his election to the House of Representatives in 2000, Representative Callegari worked for over 30 years in the water industry.

Pension Gap of $1 Trillion Is ‘Daunting’ Bill to U.S. States

2010-02-22T17:02:00.000-06:00

Pension Gap of $1 Trillion Is ‘Daunting’ Bill to U.S. States
By Darrell Preston and Nanette Byrnes

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. states must contend with a more than $1 trillion gap between what they have saved and what they have promised to retired workers for pension and health-care benefits, the Pew Center on the States said in a report today.

States have saved $2.35 trillion of the $3.35 trillion owed to workers as of mid-2008, the center said. The Washington-based group expects the deficit to grow because of investment losses states sustained in the second half of 2008, the report said.

Illinois,Connecticut and New Jersey were among the 16 lowest-ranked in terms of funding pension and retiree health care, according to Pew. The gap reflects “states’ own policy choices and lack of discipline” in failing to set aside enough money and expanding benefits without deciding how to pay for it, the report said.

“States don’t manage this liability and the costs continue to go up,” said Susan Urahn, managing director for the Pew Center, in a conference call with reporters yesterday. “States will either have to make cuts in other priorities or raise taxes.”

Local governments’ borrowing costs in the U.S. municipal bond market may rise because companies that grade the debt factor in the liability, said Urahn. Investors seek higher yields when ratings are lower to compensate for the perception of greater risk.

$3 Trillion

The gap that Pew calculated may be one-third that estimated by Orin S. Kramer, chairman of New Jersey’s State Investment Council and manager of Boston Provident Partners, a hedge fund. Kramer projected a $2 trillion unfunded liability for public pension funds and a $1 trillion gap for health-care benefits for retired public employees, according to a January commentary published by Bloomberg.

Under funding of pensions has been cited in rating cuts or negative outlooks for Connecticut, Nevada and New Jersey, said Edith Behr, a senior credit officer with Moody’s Investors Service.

“States have less money to pay for services that are absolutely expected,” Behr said in an interview. “It’s when you get to times like this when you start having to make some of the tough choices, cutting back services, cutting back staff, raising taxes.”

Urahn called the pension gap “perhaps the most daunting” of all the bills that will come due for states and municipalities. The full payment for plans the study looked at was $108 billion last year, compared with spending of $152 billion on higher education. Florida, Idaho, New York and North Carolina entered the recession with fully funded pensions, the report said. Twenty states have saved nothing for future obligations for health care and other benefits.

California’s Obligations

California, the most-populous U.S. state, owes $51.8 billion for future retiree health and dental costs, an increase of $3.6 billion from a year earlier, said state controller John Chiang in a press release Feb. 9. At the same time the state faces a budget deficit of $20 billion over the next 18 months.

The state can’t ignore its promised benefits “even as we try to claw our way out of the recession and provide needed cash to the state’s coffers,” Chiang said in a statement.

Fitch Ratings, which hasn’t seen states cutting back on funding pensions, is monitoring for such steps because of the tendency by states to trim contributions in past recessions, Richard Raphael, an analyst with Fitch, said in an interview.

Illinois sold bonds last month to cover its pension liability.

Obama's Budget Seeks $2 Trillion More in Spending and Deficits Than Last Year

2010-02-02T14:41:00.001-06:00

Obama's Budget Seeks $2 Trillion More in Spending and Deficits Than Last Year

The Truth About President Obama and Citizens United

2010-01-29T10:14:00.001-06:00

I have to admit that if I had been sitting in the House chamber during President Obama’s State of the Union address, I would have had to fight the urge to have a Joe Wilson moment when the President unjustly criticized the Supreme Court, six of whose members were there. Why? Because the two claims President Obama made about the Court’s decision last week in the Citizens United case are categorically and undeniably false.

President Obama claimed that the Supreme Court had “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.” Justice Alito seemed to shake his head and mouth the words “not true.” And well he should. The fact is that the Court overturned a federal ban on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions, and in so doing, it rejected the proposition that the government can decide who gets to speak and can ban some from speaking at all.

First of all, the 100-year claim is completely wrong. In 1907, Congress passed the Tillman Act that banned direct contributions by corporations to federal candidates – there was no ban on independent political expenditures in the law. “Contributions” are funds given directly to candidates for their election campaigns; independent expenditures are funds spent by third parties on things like political advertisements without any coordination with the candidate.
The Tillman Act was sponsored by South Carolina Senator Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman, probably the most vicious racist to ever serve in Congress. Tillman was a Democratic segregationist who was chiefly responsible for the imposition of Jim Crow in South Carolina after the end of Reconstruction when he was governor. This federal law, that so-called “progressives” like the President are constantly praising, was intended by Tillman to hurt the Republican Party – the party of abolition and Abraham Lincoln – because many corporations contributed to the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. These corporations did not like segregation in the South – it cost them money and made it more expensive to sell their goods and services.
Congress did not ban independent political expenditures by corporations and labor unions until 1947. For three decades after the passage of that law, the Supreme Court went out of its way to avoid upholding its constitutionality, and the Court actually struck down a separate ban on independent expenditures as well as a state law prohibiting corporate expenditures on referenda. It was not until 1990 in the Austin case that the Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld a state ban on independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation (a trade association) in a case completely at odds with prior precedent. The actual electioneering communications provision at issue in the Citizens United case was part of the McCain-Feingold amendments to federal campaign finance law in 2002.

So the point is that the law the President claims has been in place for 100 years has been on the books since 1947, and the Supreme Court only issued a very odd decision twenty years ago upholding such a corporate ban in conflict with stare decisis (Quite tellingly, the government refused to defend the 1990 decision on the basis of its actual reasoning when it argued the Citizens United case). As Justice Kennedy said, “[n]o case before Austin had held that Congress could prohibit independent expenditures for political speech based on the speaker’s corporate identity.” While the Supreme Court in Citizens United found that the corporate ban on independent political expenditures is unconstitutional, it did not touch the ban on direct contributions to federal candidates. That is the ban that represents “a century of law” and it remains in force today contrary to the President’s assertion.
The President’s second point about those evil foreign corporations is also totally wrong. 2 U.S.C. § 441e bans all foreign nationals from directly or indirectly contributing to a federal candidate or a political party. It also bans all foreign nationals from making any independent political expenditures – and this ban was not overturned by the Supreme Court. The term “foreign nationals” is defined to include individuals, foreign governments, foreign political parties, and corporations “organized under the laws or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.” It is simply not true that Citizens United freed foreign corporations to make independent expenditures in American elections.

Congress itself put an exemption into the law. If you are not a U.S. citizen but are lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the U.S., this ban does not apply to you. The Federal Election Commission has interpreted this provision with regard to corporations to mean that only U.S. domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations can establish political action committees, and only if those PAC’s donations and disbursements derive entirely from funds generated by the U.S. operations of the subsidiary and all decisions concerning the donations and disbursements are made by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. I was actually on the FEC as a commissioner when we considered an advisory opinion request from a Canadian company over its U.S. domestic subsidiary, and this was the rule followed by the FEC to implement federal law. Under current law, there are multiple layers of protection to prevent foreign influence on our elections.

This makes perfect sense. Foreign corporations are prohibited from participating in American elections. But their domestic subsidiaries that are American companies, employ American workers, have American officers, and pay American taxes, are able to participate in the American election process to the same extent as other U.S. companies as long as all of the money and all of the decisions are American.
The Citizens United decision did not even consider this ban on foreign nationals. So the President was completely out-of-line when he made the claim that foreign corporations would be able to spend without limit in our elections, a claim that seems to have become a talking point for critics of the Supreme Court’s decision.

The President should know better than to make these false claims. After all, he taught a voting rights class at the University of Chicago that loosely covered campaign finance law, and his new White House counsel is Bob Bauer, probably the leading Democratic campaign finance lawyer in Washington. Bauer even wrote one of the only books that exists explaining the nuts and bolts of federal campaign finance law.

The President owes Justice Alito and the other justices of the Supreme Court an apology for completely mischaracterizing their opinion, an opinion that helped restore the full protections of the First Amendment. It was a decision that upheld some of our most basic principles, principles about the freedom to engage in political speech that are incorporated into the Constitution, a document that the critics of this decision seem all to willing to ignore when its requirements don’t fit their political objectives

Morning Bell: A Nothing Burger, A Fig Leaf, and a Commission On the Side

2010-01-21T13:04:00.000-06:00

Morning Bell: A Nothing Burger, A Fig Leaf, and a Commission On the Side
Posted By Mike Brownfield On January 21, 2010 @ 9:46 am In Entitlements
11 Comments
From the President who brought you unaccountable, constitutionally-questionable czars comes the latest innovation in pass-the-buck leadership: a White House executive commission designed to solve the behemoth of a spending problem plaguing the federal government. Members of Congress have described the commission as a “nothing burger,” a “fig leaf” and “something that is put in place to kind of cover [President Obama’s] rear end.” [1] Colorful critiques aside, it’s an executive commission tasked with making policy recommendations [2] aimed at reducing the country’s projected $1.4 trillion deficit.
News of the commission follows the Senate’s debate this week on the increase of America’s debt limit by a whopping $1.9 trillion [3], which would raise Congress’ theoretical credit card limit to $14.3 trillion. That’s a legal necessity if the federal government wants to keep borrowing more money. The key word is “wants,” since the only return on the borrowed money is out-of-control discretionary spending and an expansive entitlement system with no responsible fiscal future. Congress must address the entitlements crisis if it wants to honestly address the root cause of our future debt problems.
Due to rising costs in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid [4], federal spending will cause the debt to grow to 300% of the economy by 2050 [5]. In total, the entitlement programs have promised $45 trillion more in benefits than the country can afford to pay. But hey, we can just raise taxes right? Raising taxes to fund these benefits would require an additional $12,072 per household by 2050 and further thereafter, which would create a tremendous burden on families and future generations. Cutting spending will not be sufficient to pay for the programs, as they will consume the entire federal budget by 2052 [4].
And if you think today’s economy is bad, you’ll really dislike what the future has in store. If Congress does not immediately address its long-term debt problem, America will face a fiscal crisis far worse than what we’ve seen in the past two years. Publicly-held debt must not grow faster than the economy if it is to be sustainable; otherwise the demand on capital markets would be so severe that private and foreign lenders would stop buying U.S. securities. Yet the United States is still on an unsustainable course.
Enter the executive commission. The Wall Street Journal describes its component make-up [2]: “The 18-member commission will include six people appointed by congressional Democrats, six appointed by congressional Republicans and six appointed by the president. Of the president’s six, two will be Republicans and four will be Democrats.”
This veneer of budget-fixing bipartisanship will no doubt make for a lovely rhetorical flourish at the President’s January 27 State of the Union Address, where it will likely serve as a centerpiece in his argument that he is making serious efforts to tackle out-of-control spending.
But as The Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler explains, the commission would be inherently flawed and ineffective [6], given that it lacks the accountability and “public consultation” necessary to gain popular support for any reforms it recommends: “The commissioners would be chosen from a pool of potentially lame duck Members of Congress, with a report due after the election and recommendations to be crammed through and voted on by the end of the year in a lame duck session. If this process were actually successful, it would virtually guarantee a back-room “Andrews Air Force Base” deal consisting of immediate and real tax hikes combined with distant and doubtful spending cuts.”
There’s a deeper truth at work here: a commission to study budget reform is an unnecessary measure designed to keep one’s hands clean while another does the dirty work. In reality, there’s nothing stopping Congress or the President from acting on their own accord and bearing the mantle of responsibility that the public has placed on their shoulders. In short, they have the power – but evidently not the will – to take serious steps to cut spending and reduce the deficit that this year exploded to “26 percent of the economy.” [6]
They could start with canceling TARP [6], capping discretionary spending growth (which has increased by 25 percent over the last three years) [7], and returning to federal spending levels [8] of just a decade ago. These fiscally prudent steps would immediately signal the American public that Congress comprehends the crisis. At that time, Washington could undertake serious entitlement reform that puts America on a fiscally responsible path forward. Understanding you have a problem is a good start, but a lame duck commission is not the solution.
Quick Hits:
According to the AP [9], “the number of newly laid-off workers seeking jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week, as the economy recovers at a slow and uneven pace.”
The New York Times attempts to rationalize why so many college professors are liberal by blaming “typecasting [10]” in this morning’s edition, and also blames William F. Buckley and conservatives themselves.
200,000 Haitians could apply [11] for Temporary Protected Status to live and work in the United States, starting Thursday. Their status would allow them to remain the United States for 18 months. They must first prove they were in the United States before January 12, when the earthquake struck Haiti.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has retracted its earlier 2007 claim that the Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035. The IPCC now says there is little scientific evidence to back up their claim [12].
For the first time in the history of the Index for Economic Freedom [13], the United States is no longer in the top category of economically free countries and is even second in the North American region (behind Canada). This year’s score of 78, though high in global standards, is 2.7 points lower than last year and bumps the United States to a second-tier country of freedom. For more, visit www.JobsAndFreedom.com [14].
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: http://blog.heritage.org
URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/21/morning-bell-a-nothing-burger-a-fig-leaf-and-a-commission-on-the-side/
URLs in this post:
[1] “nothing burger,” a “fig leaf” and “something that is put in place to kind of cover [President Obama’s] rear end.”: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2015326920100120
[2] executive commission tasked with making policy recommendations: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013852530566476.html
[3] increase of America’s debt limit by a whopping $1.9 trillion: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/01/senate-discussing-a-raise-in-n.html?wprss=44
[4] rising costs in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid: http://issues2010.com/pdf/Entitlements.pdf
[5] 300% of the economy by 2050: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2710.cfm
[6] the commission would be inherently flawed and ineffective: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/20/please-no-white-house-lame-duck-commission/
[7] capping discretionary spending growth (which has increased by 25 percent over the last three years): http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/20/discretionary-spending-caps-a-good-first-step/
[8] returning to federal spending levels: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/11/morning-bell-speaker-pelosis-spendapalooza/
[9] According to the AP: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Initial-jobless-claims-apf-3027105474.html?x=0&.v=5
[10] typecasting: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html
[11] 200,000 Haitians could apply: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/1436831.html
[12] The IPCC now says there is little scientific evidence to back up their claim: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100120/ap_on_sc/un_un_climate_change
[13] Index for Economic Freedom: http://www.heritage.org/Press/FactSheet/fs0049.cfm
[14] www.JobsAndFreedom.com: http://www.jobsandfreedom.com/

Obama Tracking Poll 1-20-2010

2010-01-20T14:08:00.001-06:00

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 28% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12 (see trends).
On the first anniversary of his inauguration, the President is dealing with the fallout from a stunning election upset in Massachusetts last night. On his way to victory, Scott Brown won unaffiliated voters by a 73% to 25% margin. That is consistent with a weakness among unaffiliated voters that has been evident in the President’s numbers for several months. Currently, just 25% of unaffiliated voters Strongly Approve of the President’s performance while 44% Strongly Disapprove.
Most voters said health care was the top voting issue in Massachusetts. But, a final look at the Massachusetts Election Night Poll shows that Martha Coakley narrowly won among voters who ranked health care as most important. Brown won among those who consider the economy most important. That’s consistent with national polling showing that voters are now more likely to trust Republicans over Democrats when it comes to the economy.
Overall, just 38% of voters nationwide now support the health care plan working its way through Congress. That matches the lowest level of support yet measured. Data will be released later today on the health care excise tax and other related issues.
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.
Overall, 48% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove. To get a sense of longer-term trends, check out our month-by-month review of the President’s numbers.
In Texas, both Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison lead likely Democratic nominee Bill White in the race for Governor. In the Republican Primary, Governor Rick Perry leads Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison by a 43% to 33% margin. A third candidate, Debra Medina, attracts support from 12%. Medina’s numbers jumped from 4% earlier in the race and she has now been invited to participate in an upcoming debate.
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In California, Senator Barbara Boxer’s support remains below 50% against three potential opponents. In Colorado, Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton leads Democratic Senator Michael Bennett by a double digit margin. Rasmussen Reports has released other Senate polls for Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Kentucky. and California.
In Ohio, Republican John Kasich still holds a modest lead over incumbent Governor Ted Strickland. Rasmussen Reports has also released polls on the 2010 governor’s races in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas.
Scott Rasmussen has recently had several columns published in the Wall Street Journal addressing how President Obama is losing independent voters , health care reform, the President's approval ratings, and how Obama won the White House by campaigning like Ronald Reagan. If you'd like Scott Rasmussen to speak at your meeting, retreat, or conference, contact Premiere Speakers Bureau. You can also learn about Scott's favorite place on earth or his time working with hockey legend Gordie Howe.
It is important to remember that the Rasmussen Reports job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters. Some other firms base their approval ratings on samples of all adults. President Obama's numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters. That's because some of the President's most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote. It is also important to check the details of question wording when comparing approval ratings from different firms.
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Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology).
Pollster.com founder Mark Blumenthal noted that “independent analyses from the National Council on Public Polls, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the Pew Research Center, the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight.com have all shown that the horse-race numbers produced by automated telephone surveys did at least as well as those from conventional live-interviewer surveys in predicting election outcomes.”
In the 2009 New Jersey Governor’s race, automated polls tended to be more accurate than operator-assisted polling techniques. On reviewing the state polling results from 2009, Mickey Kaus offered this assessment, “If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the prestigious N.Y. Times, go with Rasmussen!” During Election 2008, Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com said that the Rasmussen tracking poll “would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island."
A Fordham University professor rated the national pollsters on their record in Election 2008. We also have provided a summary of our results for your review. In 2008, Obama won 53%-46% and our final poll showed Obama winning 52% to 46%. While we were pleased with the final result, Rasmussen Reports was especially pleased with the stability of our results. On every single day for the last six weeks of the campaign, our daily tracking showed Obama with a stable and solid lead attracting more than 50% of the vote.
An analysis by Pollster.com partner Charles Franklin “found that despite identically sized three-day samples, the Rasmussen daily tracking poll is less variable than Gallup.” During Election 2008, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll was the least volatile of all those tracking the race.
In 2004 George W. Bush received 50.7% of the vote while John Kerry earned 48.3%. Rasmussen Reports was the only firm to project both candidates’ totals within half a percentage point by projecting that Bush would win 50.2% to 48.5%. (see our 2004 results).
Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters--is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Premium Members.
Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large (see methodology). Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. While partisan affiliation is generally quite stable over time, there are a fair number of people who waver between allegiance to a particular party or independent status. Over the past five years, the number of Democrats in the country has increased while the number of Republicans has decreased.
Our baseline targets are established based upon separate survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews) and targets are updated monthly. Currently, the baseline targets for the adult population are 37.1% Democrats, 32.4% Republicans, and 30.5% unaffiliated. Likely voter samples typically show a slightly smaller advantage for the Democrats.
A review of last week’s key polls is posted each Saturday morning. Other stats on Obama are updated daily on the Rasmussen Reports Obama By the Numbers page. We also invite you to review other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls

MORE INVESTIGATION REVEALS DETAILS OF OPERATIONS OF MAJOR DRUG TRAFFICING IN THE UNITED STATES

2010-01-14T12:01:00.003-06:00

The U.S. investigation of La Familia Michoacana (“LFM”) has revealed many details about the operation of the group in the United States and answered some important questions about the nature of Mexican drug trafficking and distribution north of the border.
LFM stands out among the various drug cartels that operate throughout Mexico for several reasons. Unlike other drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) that have always been focused on drug trafficking, LFM first arose in Michoacan several years ago as a vigilante response to kidnappers and drug gangs. Before long, however, LFM members were themselves accused of conducting the very crimes they had opposed, including kidnapping for ransom, cocaine and marijuana trafficking and, eventually, methamphetamine production. The group is now the largest and most powerful criminal organization in Michoacan — a largely rural state located on Mexico’s southwestern Pacific coast — and maintains a significant presence in several surrounding states.
Beyond its vigilante origins, LFM has also set itself apart from other criminal groups in Mexico by its almost cult-like ideology. LFM leaders are known to distribute documents to the group’s members that include codes of conduct and pseudo-religious quotations from Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, also known as “El Mas Loco” (“the craziest one”), who appears to serve as a sort of inspirational leader of the group.

Unanswered Questions

In April 2009, STRATFOR published a report on the dynamics of narcotics distribution in the United States. It laid out the differences between trafficking (transporting large quantities of drugs from the suppliers to the buyers over the most efficient routes possible) and distribution (the smaller scale, retail sale of small quantities of drugs over a broader geographic area) as well as the various gangs on the U.S. side that are involved in drug trafficking. The report outlined the differences in the resources and skills required to transport tons of narcotics hundreds of miles through Mexico versus picking up those loads at the border and managing the U.S. retail networks that distribute narcotics to the individual buyers on the street.
In the April analysis, several intelligence gaps were identified in the interface between the Mexican-based drug traffickers (such as the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltran-Leyva Organization [BLO] and Los Zetas) and the U.S.-based drug distributors (such as MS-13, Barrio Azteca and the Mexican Mafia). One question we were left with was: How deeply involved are the Mexican DTOs in the U.S. distribution network? While it appeared that narcotics changed hands at the border, it wasn’t clear how or even whether the relationships between gangs and drug traffickers had an effect on the distribution of narcotics within the United States. Although we suspected it, there was little evidence that showed cartel involvement in the downstream or retail distribution of narcotics in the U.S. market.

Command and Control in Chicago

Now there is evidence. The indictment handed down Nov. 20 in Chicago clearly alleges that a criminal group in Chicago was directly conspiring with the drug trafficking organization LFM to distribute shipments of cocaine. The indictment specifically links the criminal group in Chicago to LFM and labels it a “command and control group” run by someone in Michoacan. While the indictment only referred to this person as “individual A,” we suspect that the unidentified person was LFM operational manager Servando Gomez Martinez, the second in command of LFM. The manager of the Chicago command and control group, Jorge Luis Torres-Galvan, and the distribution supervisor, Jose Gonzalez-Zavala, were allegedly in regular contact with their manager in Mexico, updating him on accounting issues and relying on him to authorize which wholesale distributors the group could do business with in the United States.
These wholesale distributors also appear to have had close ties to the command and control group. According to the indictment, they were allowed to sell cocaine on consignment — they could wait to pay Zavala once the entire load was sold — an agreement that indicates a great deal of trust between the supplier and the retail distributor. It was likely a matter of the LFM commander in Mexico authorizing their involvement and probably was based on an existing business or extended-family relationship. Due to LFM’s ideological basis, its members should be thought of more as adherents than employees. The group does not operate using the same business objectives as most other major DTOs, so we would expect personal relationships to be more valued than strictly business relationships among LFM members.
Another member of the group, Jorge Guadalupe Ayala-German, allegedly operated stash houses in the Chicago area where deliveries of narcotics would come in and shipments of cash would leave. The indictment says Ezequel Hernandez-Patino was responsible for physically delivering the shipments of cocaine to the wholesale distributors, and Ismail Flores with Oscar Bueno were responsible for transporting money south to Dallas, where they would deliver cash proceeds from the sale of cocaine and pick up more cocaine to sell. The indictment does not indicate that Flores or Bueno supplied any other markets between Dallas and Chicago, which suggests that the Chicago-based LFM members were fairly compartmentalized.

Project Coronado

The larger operation from which the Chicago indictment emerged, the DEA-led Project Coronado, was a joint operation with the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and numerous other agencies. It followed several similar nationwide sweeps such as Operation Xcellerator, a multi-year effort to dismantle the Sinaloa cartel’s connections in the United States, and Project Reckoning, which went after a Gulf cartel network in the United States that was trafficking cocaine to Italy. Under Project Coronado, the DEA, FBI and ATF, along with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, have made a total of almost 1,200 arrests, seized $32.8 million in U.S. currency and seized 11.7 tons of marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine and heroin since the operation began in 2005. Dozens of other indictments and criminal complaints (in addition to the Chicago indictment) have been unsealed against associates of the group across the country since Oct. 22, the official culmination of Project Coronado.
The other cases revealed more details about LFM’s operations in the United States: how it trafficked methamphetamines and cocaine from Mexico to Dallas, how a cell in Nashville was supplied by a distribution hub in Atlanta, and how a group in New York had obtained automatic assault rifles, high-caliber pistols and ammunition with the intent to smuggle those weapons back to Mexico to supply LFM. LFM has been responsible for a substantial level of violence in southwestern Mexico, and former Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Morina Mora recently called it the most dangerous cartel in Mexico.
The Northern District of Texas had the most cases as a result of Project Coronado. It appears that Dallas was a major U.S. hub for LFM, where it managed drug shipments from Mexico to other regions (Chicago and Arkansas were specifically mentioned) and the collection of cash from those distributors before shipping the cash back to Mexico. Dallas is a logical hub for such activity because of its proximity to Mexico and its location along Interstate 35 and Interstate 20, which link Dallas to the rest of the United States as well as points to the south. In at least one case, an individual attempting to smuggle four kilograms of methamphetamines to Dallas passed through the McAllen, Texas, border crossing on a passenger bus but was interdicted by police.
Most indictments (including the one in Chicago) pointed out that LFM groups in the United States conducted countersurveillance while moving drug shipments. On one occasion, accused Dallas drug distributor Soto Cervantes changed the location of a meet-up point when he learned that the person he was meeting suspected that he was being followed. The change in location caused the police (who were indeed following the transporter) to call off the surveillance mission in order to not compromise their investigation. As a result, authorities relied primarily on electronic surveillance of the suspects’ communications through wiretaps on home and cellular phones — of which the suspects had many and which they changed frequently.
There were other cases when police were unable to follow suspects due to such surveillance detection tactics, when targeted traffickers called off meetings and changed vehicles in an effort to confuse police. While seemingly simple, these tactics indicate a higher degree of tradecraft and professionalism among the suspects linked to LFM, who don’t appear to be members of run-of-the-mill street gangs. It is unclear if these tactics have been institutionalized in the LFM network, but judging by the frequency that police encountered them in various U.S. cities during Project Coronado, they appear to be a standard practice for many if not all LFM members.

Implications

The details released in the Nov. 20 indictment provide solid evidence that drug trafficking organizations in Mexico (specifically LFM) have established command and control groups inside the United States that report to and receive orders from commanders in Mexico. And this shows that LFM has had an international presence far beyond what we originally suspected and is not just a small-time trafficking group in southwestern Mexico.
Whereas most drug distribution in the United States is carried out by individual gangs serving their own interests and operating on their own familiar turf, the criminal group in Chicago working for LFM was carrying out orders issued by a drug trafficking organization some 3,000 miles away. And based on the interaction the Chicago group had with its contact in Mexico, the use of such tactics as countersurveillance measures, the coordination among groups in different cities and reports from sources within U.S. counternarcotics agencies, it is likely that the individual in Mexico was managing several groups throughout the United States.
Most criminal enterprises avoid this kind of command and control structure for two reasons. First, distribution in a foreign country is not typically in a Mexican-based drug trafficker’s area of expertise. Their interests tend to focus on their own territory, which they can control much more easily due to their familiarity with and proximity to it. Second, as seen in these latest arrests, U.S. law enforcement agencies are much more proficient at thwarting drug distribution operations than Mexican law enforcement agencies are. (LFM has recently proved very proficient indeed at challenging Mexican security forces.) By passing the drugs off to gangs in the United States, major cartels are also able to avoid a great deal of liability at the hands of U.S. law enforcement. In a way, LFM’s efforts to move downstream, farther from the source of the cocaine, mirror those of other, larger Mexican DTOs that are expanding their control over the supply of cocaine in South America as they move upstream, closer to the source.
And this raises the question: Why would LFM want to expand its operations so deeply into the United States when other Mexican DTOs maintain a more superficial presence there? One possible answer is that LFM is much smaller than Sinaloa, Los Zetas and BLO, controls much less territory and gets a smaller share of the narcotics being trafficked through Mexico. By expanding business into the United States, LFM is able to leverage what little control it does have in order to gain access to the highly lucrative retail market. And then there is LFM’s ideological bent, which makes it behave at times more like a cult than a purely pragmatic business.
The answer to the above question is only conjecture. What is certain, at this point, is that there is now a precedent for Mexican DTOs to have a greater influence over their lower-level supply-chain operations in the United States. The details released in the Chicago indictment provide a better understanding of how Mexican-based drug traffickers impact the drug distribution network inside the United States and prove that at least one, “La Familia,” is taking a very hands-on approach

President Obama's Son of Stimulus: More Costs, Fewer Jobs

2010-01-05T21:55:00.002-06:00

January 5, 2010

by Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.

Abstract: President Obama has announced a third stimulus plan, which he presented as a "jobs plan." It promises to be at least as ineffective as previous attempts to stimulate the economy because it relies heavily on government infrastructure spending even though this has been one of the least effective components of the previous stimulus plan. The latest plan is far less likely to stimulate the economy than it is to stimulate government expansion and the federal deficit, leading to higher taxes on Americans who will receive little in return.
If nothing else, President Barack Obama's speech at the Brookings Institution proposing a third stimulus reveals his stubborn persistence in trying to demonstrate that liberal economic nostrums based on big spending can work; it just takes a lot of practice to "get it right." Of course, these multiple practice sessions come at considerable cost to the taxpayer, not to mention the growing misery and poverty among the 7 million Americans who have lost their jobs since the recession began.
With mortgage default and foreclosure rates now at a record high of 14.4 percent, each month's delay in "getting it right" means that tens of thousands more families will lose their homes to foreclosure. As Jay Brinkman of the Mortgage Bankers Association has observed, "mortgages are paid with paychecks, not percentage point increases in GNP."[1]

Same Old, Same Old

With his latest plan calling for another $50 billion in infrastructure spending (e.g., roads, trolleys, trains, and sewer systems), the President's "Son of Stimulus" plan relies heavily on government infrastructure spending, one of the least effective components of the increasingly discredited American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Stimulus II). Government infrastructure spending is widely believed to be a quick ticket to job creation and economic prosperity. The House of Representatives acted first in mid-December by adding the Jobs for Main Street Act to H.R. 2847.
Based on the many congressional debates on the subject of stimulus spending, as well as the practical results of those debates, it appears that many Members of Congress feel that a stimulus plan must meet at least five criteria:
The policy must be ineffective, as confirmed by independent studies published over several decades.
Recent implementation of a similar policy must fall well short of expectations and coincide with soaring unemployment.
It must waste several billions of dollars and add to the federal deficit.
It must pander to influential constituencies.
It must be subject to long delays in implementation.
Learning from Mistakes
Notwithstanding the federal government's growing obsession with spending vast amounts of money on nearly everything, the President is apparently learning from some of his earlier mistakes in economic policy and is showing a willingness to reach across the aisle and embrace ideas and concepts endorsed by the opposition party.
For example, taking a lesson from Republican Bob McDonnell's immensely successful gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, during which he focused almost exclusively on jobs, President Obama now refers to his Son of Stimulus plan as a jobs plan, not a stimulus plan. Indeed, he never mentioned the word "stimulus" in his recent Brookings speech, but "jobs" appeared about two dozen times.
Similarly, the costly infrastructure projects to be funded by the policy are no longer described as "shovel-ready," but as "ready-to-go" in appreciation of the extraordinary delays in starting the Stimulus II shovel-ready projects. As the nation discovered in the months following the enactment of Stimulus II, the only things being shoveled were empty promises and vast volumes of bureaucratic paperwork.
None of these problems would have occurred if the President's economic team had paid attention to the economic literature instead of press releases from business trade associations and labor unions or op-eds by partisan Nobel laureates. As the Congressional Research Service noted in its earlier review of such stimulus plans:
To the extent that financing new highways by reducing expenditures on other programs or by deficit finance and its impact on private consumption and investment, the net impact on the economy of highway construction in terms of both output and employment could be nullified or even negative.[2]

Slow Stimulus, Slow Recovery

Compounding this pattern of little or even negative net impact are the significant delays often associated with stirring cumbersome federal and state bureaucracies into action and inducing them to do what many once believed was their unique talent: making lists and spending money.
For example, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D- MN) publicly complained about the ineffectiveness of the Virginia Department of Transportation. The Stimulus II package passed in February delivered $695 million in road money to the state, but by August, Virginia had begun work on only 16 percent of its designated projects compared to 43 percent nationwide. Noting that many states were working to get the projects underway, Mr. Oberstar wrote to Governor Tim Kaine that "your state ranks last among all states [51 out of 51, including the District of Columbia], based on an analysis of the percentage of Recovery Act highway formula funds put out to bid, under contract and under way."[3]
Sadly, Virginia's bureaucratic bungle was not the first time the state was accused of mishandling Recovery Act money. States were first required to submit their project requests to the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), and Virginia was the last state to provide its list. As The Washington Post noted:
For a state that has struggled for years to find road and transit money, Virginia would seem the least likely candidate to be the last one to ask for federal stimulus money for transportation. But state officials started submitting lists of shovel-ready projects to the federal government last month after the other 49 states had.[4]
While Virginia was last, it was not the only state that suffered delays. More than half of the projects approved nationwide had not started six months after enactment of Stimulus II. At a December hearing before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, staff reported that work had begun on projects representing only 54 percent of the formula-based funds.[5]
As problematic as Virginia's performance was, USDOT's performance as the lead federal agency overseeing much of the infrastructure program was even worse. Of the $8 billion that Stimulus II allocated to higher-speed rail, none will be spent until sometime in 2010, more than a year after the law's enactment. Indeed, the states were given until October 2009 (eight months after the law's enactment) to submit their proposed projects to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for possible funding. Reflecting the perennial popularity of "free" money, states requested a total of $57 billion, almost seven times more than the government is authorized to spend.
Recently, the FRA announced that the proposals were under review and that winning submissions would be announced sometime in early 2010. Once awarded, project plans must be developed in detail and then put out for competitive bid. Sometime later, the contracts will be awarded, and work will finally get underway nearly two years after the enactment of Stimulus II. Presumably, Son of Stimulus, which includes an additional $800 million for Amtrak in the House version, will be coupled to the same slow train to economic recovery.

Intentional Delays

In his speech, President Obama acknowledges the slow start in infrastructure spending, but rather than seeing it as a problem, he contends that the delays were intentional: "It was planned that way for two reasons: so the impact would be felt over a two year period; and more importantly, because we wanted to do it right" to ensure that only sound and worthy projects were funded. He then added that thanks to this scrutiny, "we're going to see even more work--and workers--on recovery projects in the next six months than we saw in the last six months."[6]
Perhaps, but if the President actually believes that these programs would make a difference in economic recovery and would create jobs, then this planned delay seems surprisingly callous toward the millions of families whose homes went into foreclosure during the scheduled delay.
This excuse, of course, will not come as a relief to the millions of people who may have believed in the plan but have still lost their jobs and houses since Congress passed the Recovery Act. Sadly, with the unemployment rate now at 10 percent, their intentional sacrifice was certainly in vain, and taxpayers are again being forced to bail out the reputations of their elected officials who now bizarrely claim ownership of this fiasco.
As the record reveals, the "do it right" claim would come as a surprise to the many journalists who have uncovered hundreds of instances of laugh-out-loud waste in Stimulus II. For example, Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ) have identified a long list of wasteful projects, including $350 million for a broadband map that duplicates existing maps, a $5 million thermal energy award to a largely vacant shopping mall, $1.57 million for fossil research in Argentina, and $50,000 to fund performances of an anti-capitalist puppet show.[7]

Conclusion

In the end, voters must wonder whether Congress and the President really care whether these repeated stimulus plans work. On one hand is the view of Rahm Emanuel, the President's chief of staff: "Never allow a crisis to go to waste.... They are opportunities to do big things."[8] In this case, the opportunity is to expand federal intrusion into the economy and the daily lives of Americans to a degree never before experienced in peacetime and to use fear of the trillion-dollar-plus deficit as an excuse for massive tax increases. On the other hand is Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
In less than a year, American voters will have the opportunity to decide whether either one (or both) of these options is what they are looking for in the nation's political leadership.
Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation

Republicans Challenge Constitutionality of Individual Mandate

2009-12-25T08:24:00.000-06:00

As passage of the Senate's health care reform bill (HR 3590) seems all but assured, Republicans have thrown up a procedural roadblock by questioning the constitutionality of some measures in the bill, CQ Today reports.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) filed a constitutional point of order against the legislation Tuesday, arguing that the mandate that all U.S. residents purchase health insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional. The Senate is expected to vote on the challenge Wednesday. Fifty-one votes are needed to defeat it.
Republicans unsuccessfully have tried to use the technique several times this year, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he is confident that Democrats will defeat Ensign's challenge.
Ensign said that the federal government does not have the power to force individuals to buy a specific product. "(I)f one of my constituents in Nevada does not want to spend his or her hard-earned income on health insurance coverage and would prefer to spend it on something else, such as rent or a car payment, this requirement could be a taking of private property under the Fifth Amendment," Ensign said (Hunter/Perine, CQ Today, 12/22).
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ensign both delivered floor speeches Tuesday denouncing the constitutionality of the individual mandate, The Hill's "Blog Briefing Room" reports (Young, "Blog Briefing Room," The Hill, 12/22).
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) also said Monday that a provision in the bill that would levy fees on insurance companies -- but would provide exceptions to benefit not-for-profit insurers in Nebraska and Michigan -- "will not stand the test of the Constitution" because it "cannot be considered equal protection under the law."
Some legal experts disagreed with Ensign and Hutchison, arguing that the mandate is constitutional because Congress is permitted to "regulate commerce… among the several states." In addition, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Congress (CQ Today, 12/22).
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) also said that insurance is subject to the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the Washington Times reports.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs defended the deals in the bill that have come under GOP criticism, calling them part of the regular legislative process (Dinan, Washington Times, 12/23).
Attorneys General Challenge Reform Bill
State attorneys general in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas and Washington are examining the constitutionality of the Senate reform bill, focusing on a provision that would shield Nebraska from the expected $45 million annual cost of expanding Medicaid, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports.
Nebraska is Sen. Ben Nelson's (D) home state, and the provision is viewed as a concession used to help garner his support. Other states -- including Louisiana, Massachusetts and Vermont -- also would receive special Medicaid funding under the bill.
"The Nebraska compromise, which permanently exempts Nebraska from paying Medicaid costs that Texas and all other 49 states must pay, may violate the United States Constitution -- as well as other provisions of federal law," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said (Davenport, AP/Houston Chronicle, 12/22).

The Battle Over Obamacare's Obituary Has Begun

2009-12-14T11:36:00.000-06:00

Last month, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rammed through her version of Obamacare almost a week before the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS), could issue its non-partisan and independent analysis of the legislation. And for supporters of the President’s plan, it’s a good thing she did. The CMMS report eviscerated almost every single promise the President has made about his health care plan.

According to that report, Obamacare: 1) raises health care costs; 2) causes millions of Americans to lose their current health care coverage; 3) forces millions of Americans to pay fines and still receive no health insurance; 4) causes millions of seniors to lose their Medicare Advantage plans; 4) places millions of Americans on welfare; 5) jeopardizes Medicare access for all seniors; 6) worsens health care access for the poor.This past Friday, CMMS issued another report, this time on Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) version of Obamacare and the verdict was in many ways worse: 1) health care costs would rise by $234 billion; 2) 17 million Americans would be forced out of their existing health insurance; 3) 19 million Americans would pay $29 billion in taxes/fines and receive no health care in return; 4) 33% of all Medicare Advantage customers would lose their health care plan; 5) 18 million Americans would be put on welfare; 6) the $493 billion in Medicare cuts would force 20% of Medicare providers to become unprofitable thus jeopardizing access to care for all seniors; and 7) the explosion in Medicaid recipients would exacerbate existing health care access problems for the poor.The week before the Senate began debating Obamacare, CNN conducted a poll and found that Americans narrowly opposed the plan, 49% to 46%. Now that the Senate has been debating the plan for two weeks, and CMMS has issued two devastating reports on what the impacts of Obamacare would be, opposition to the plan has skyrocketed. This Friday’s latest CNN poll showed 61% of Americans now oppose Obamacare compared to just 36% who support it.Liberals are is beginning to see the writing on the wall. They know that if Obamacare fails to pass the Senate this year, the battle will be on to explain its failure. For them, the story can not be that President Barack Obama tried to push too ambitious a government health plan. It must be that the President and Congress did not go far enough to the left to satisfy the supposedly government-hungry American people. Hence the left is now attacking the White House and Reid over the public option, the employer mandate, drug reimportation, abortion, and health insurance spending caps.Obamacare is not dead yet. Speaker Pelosi has signaled that she will quickly pass anything that comes out of the Senate, so Reid could still cave on almost everything and get a terrible bill from everybody’s prospective on the President’s desk by New Years. But Senators thinking about moving quickly should remember that the public strongly opposes this bill, and that opposition is only rising.

GOP Senators Note $7 Billion Waste in Stimulus

2009-12-10T14:21:00.000-06:00

By Humberto Sanchez CongressDaily December 8, 2009

A GOP report released Tuesday charged that 100 projects amounting to $7 billion in waste were funded by February's $787 billion stimulus package.

"If you really want to create jobs with deficit spending, then you need to be doing it in an area that creates the most jobs," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., at a news conference on the report. He and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., spearheaded the project.
Coburn pointed to a shopping mall in Oak Ridge, Tenn., that was awarded $5 million from the stimulus to provide geothermal heat.

"We take $5 million to do geothermal heat on something that is not going to be used in the future, or at least has very little likelihood of being used in the future to the full extent," Coburn said.

McCain said he was not surprised that the stimulus resulted in wasted funds because he contends the package had insufficient provisions for oversight, cost control, and competition. He criticized projects to study ant behavior at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, which received $500,000 and $450,000, respectively.
Coburn said he believes that more than $55 billion will have been wasted once the entire stimulus is spent, citing a previous estimate by Earl Devaney, the chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

The two said Vice President Biden, the Obama administration's point man on the stimulus, should take responsibility for the waste. Coburn said he was concerned when Biden was named to oversee the stimulus because "if you look at his voting record [in the Senate], he never saw a spending bill he didn't like."

Coburn and McCain said they would support using stimulus funds to pay for jobs legislation being drafted by Democrats. But Democratic leaders are leaning toward wanting to use funds from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
McCain and Coburn said they oppose the idea of using TARP repayment money to address unemployment, arguing that it should instead be used to reduce the deficit. Furthermore, they said, tapping any unused TARP funds would add to the deficit because the money would still have to be borrowed

The Copenhagen Climate Comedy-Morning Bell, Heritage Foundation

2009-12-07T11:06:00.001-06:00

Imagine an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where all the members showed up drunk and with extra cases of wine, beer, and booze to keep them happy. Now imagine that that same group of drunks was empowered to make trillions of dollars worth of economic decisions for everybody in the world. This absurd scenario swiftly summarizes the United Nations Climate Change Conference beginning today, and lasting through December 18, in Copenhagen.

Despite the fact that the entire conference is founded on the belief that human economic activity, especially flying and driving, is emitting levels of greenhouse gasses that will soon kill us all, plutocrats from around the world have marshaled over 1,200 limos and 140 private planes to travel to and around Copenhagen over the next two weeks. When they are not participating in the world’s oldest profession, conferees will be negotiating over a successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which obligated most developed nations to reduce their greenhouse emissions by 5 percent below 1990 baseline levels by 2012.So how did those Kyoto emissions reduction pledges turnout? According to U.N. data, between 2000 and 2006, the 27 European signatories actually increased their emissions by 0.1%. Canada even saw a 21.3% emissions rise. Meanwhile, the U.S., who was not bound by the treaty since the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 not to subject our economy to costly regulations that China and India were specifically exempted from, actually reduced our emissions by 3% over the same time period.One key reason Europe failed to meet their Kyoto obligations was the tremendous cost of reducing emissions, estimated at $67.75 billion to $170.84 billion through 2008. Because of the high costs of reducing emissions, Copenhagen is seen, especially by Europeans, as an opportunity to force the U.S. to join the other developed countries required to reduce emissions. The economic stakes are huge. Nick Main, global managing partner for climate change and sustainability at the consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, tells the Los Angeles Times: “One of the reasons that this negotiation is difficult is it really does involve issues of competitive and comparative advantage between countries. This is really an economic debate of, ‘How do you pay the costs?’”And the costs to our economy would be huge. A Heritage Foundation analysis of Waxman-Markey found that this energy tax would have serious implications throughout the economy. For a household of four, energy costs (electric, natural gas, gasoline expenses) would rise by $436 in 2012 and by $1,241 by 2035, averaging $829 over that period. Higher energy costs would increase the cost of many other products and services. Overall, Waxman-Markey would reduce gross domestic product by $393 billion annually and by a total of $9.4 trillion by 2035.The Obama administration is sadly mistaken if it believes they can unilaterally submit the American people to such an economic disaster. Even Senators within the President’s own party have expressed grave concerns with the administration’s Copenhagen promises. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) recently wrote the President: “Although details have not been made available, recent statements by Special Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern indicate that negotiators may be intending to commit the United States to a nationwide emission reduction program. As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.”With unemployment still in the double digits, now is not the time to subjecting the U.S. economy to costly new rules, especially rules that are not equally applied to developing countries like India and China.

Commentary on our federal debt and our future

2009-12-04T12:36:00.001-06:00

Obama said the other day that the debt was $1.4 trillion. The New York Times had it in a headline and no one questioned it.
The Bureau of the Public Debt at the Treasury Department, said it is $1.885 trillion, almost half a trillion more than the president. You can figure out who is telling the truth.
The way Obama and Democrats do it is they don’t count the money that they spend from the trust funds. They give the trust funds like Social Security an IOU and the IOU is worthless because it’s part of the national debt. It is not embezzlement or fraud only because the government is doing it. It is deceit and misrepresentation.
Now for the question of healthcare…some liberals call it reform… and its impact on our economy should be considered.
It’s going to cost over $2 trillion, but the worst part of it is that the states, which are virtually bankrupt — now about $200 billion in the hole — are going to have to pay 43% of it.
The federal government (us) for a couple of years is going to pay the major portion of it, but then after the few years the states are going to be saddled permanently with picking up the tab.
RESULT: Property taxes, state income taxes, and sales taxes will go up.
BHO said it is not going to hurt the middle class but property tax is a major hit on the middle class.
BHO is going to take maybe about $1 trillion out of Medicare. Is this going to reduce the benefits to people that have paid into the system? I think we know that answer.
BHO and the left wing of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media are “masters of deceit” and spin when it comes to the spiraling debt. They are working to fool the American people by calming them. You can see that in many articles today. Do you understand why the dollar has trended down against other currencies and gold?
Noting that half the people in the U.S. pay no federal income taxes and are supported by the other half, we have no responsible group in America who is taking care of the middle class. The Republicans claimed they were going to, then under Geo. W. Bush they became like the drunken Democrats in spending habits.
I am afraid it is probable that Democrats my win this round due to the Obama distortion, but when they do they must then become responsible to the people, because the path we are on is a path of absolute and pure destruction.
Remember, USSR was not invaded; it imploded because of their debt and their broken economy. Our federal government is now the lead player in destroying the economy.
Some estimates place America’s debt at $25 trillion by 2019, with $1.5 trillion a year in interest payments. We must terminate this insane spending, or we are going to spend ourselves into oblivion.

Governmental stimulus – the fallacy and myth

2009-12-01T19:41:00.002-06:00

“Government cannot create new purchasing power out of thin air. If Congress funds new spending with taxes, it is simply redistributing existing income. If Congress instead borrows the money from domestic investors, those investors will have that much less to invest or to spend in the private economy. If Congress borrows the money from foreigners, the balance of payments will adjust by equally reducing net exports, leaving GDP unchanged.

Every dollar Congress spends must first come from somewhere else.
This does not mean that government spending has no economic impact at all. Government spending often alters the consumption of total demand, such as increasing consumption at the expense of investment.”

When stimulus packages are created the money has to come from someone via taxes, or be printed. Both are net negatives to the economy. Economic growth only results from producing more goods and services (not from redistributing existing income), and that requires productivity growth and growth in the labor supply as productivity not only increases wealth but also wages and wage opportunities.

The Fake Jobs of Obama's Failed Stimulus-Heritage Foundation

2009-11-17T13:32:00.001-06:00

Forget everything bad you’ve ever heard about President Barack Obama’s $787 economic stimulus. Combing through the data on the $18 million Recovery.gov website you’ll find tons of Obama stimulus success stories from across the country. In Minnesota’s 57th Congressional District, 35 jobs have been saved or created using $404,340 in stimulus funds. In New Mexico’s 22nd Congressional District, 25 jobs have been saved or created using $61,000 in stimulus cash. And in Arizona’s fighting 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending.

The it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-our-tax-dollars-at-stake punch line here is that none of the above Congressional Districts actually exist. Yet those jobs “created or saved” claims still sit on the Obama administration’s official “transparency and accountability” website Recovery.gov. As the Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso points out, it would have been nearly costless for the Recovery.gov site designers to limit the input fields so that non-existent Congressional Districts never made it into the public domain, but for whatever reason the Obama administration chose otherwise. Defending the fake data on his website, Recovery.gov Communications Director Ed Pound told ABC News: “We report what the recipients submit to us. Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on job numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.”Pound is dead wrong. The problem with Recovery.gov is not human reporting error, but an error of human design. Highly trained professional economists don’t agree on how to tell when a job has been “saved or created” yet the Obama administration expects a Kentucky shoe-store owner to accurately create such data? “Just throwing in any number.” That just about sums up the accuracy of Recovery.gov. And the usually compliant mainstream press is beginning to notice.The Washington Examiner has begun tracking stories from established media outlets on bogus job claims made by the Obama administration and they have already identified 75,343 fake jobs out of the 640,000 that the Obama administration claimed. You can track Obama job fakery from around the country on the Examiner’s interactive “Bogus Jobs” map here.The lesson here is that the American people simply cannot trust any stimulus claims made by the Obama White House. Fortunately we have an objective way to hold Obama accountable.The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized data employment data since the 1940s.When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8% and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs. The unemployment rate is now 10.2% and with only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people. That makes President Obama’s stimulus an objective failure.

The Public Option is Neither Public, Nor An Option-Morning Bell, Heritage Foundation

2009-11-03T10:49:00.001-06:00

When Mike Myers’ Linda Richman character would get a “little faklempt” on the Saturday Night Live skit Coffee Talk, she would give the audience a topic to discuss while she composed herself, like: “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Discuss.” If Linda were still hosting her show today, she could as accurately say about today’s health care debate: “The public option is neither public, nor an option.” Let’s discuss.

For the leftist base of the Congressional majority, the creation of a government-run health insurance company has been the defining issue of the health care debate. So, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has explained numerous times that: “The thinking on the public option has been that it gives consumers more choices and it helps keep the private sector honest because there’s some competition out there.” But is this true? Would the public have more choices if a government run health insurance company was created?
Five different organizations and offices have made predictions of how many Americans could end up enrolled in the public option, including: The Lewin Group, the Congressional Budget Office, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Urban Institute, and Health Systems Innovations Network. They all tell a similar story: the number of Americans that end up in the government run plan will greatly depend on who is allowed to buy into it, and how much they have to pay.The Lewin Group–an independent health care analysis firm–was the first to estimate the impact of creating such a new public plan, when University of California at Berkeley professor of political science Jacob Hacker worked with them to create a model health plan for the Economic Policy Institute. The left loved the numbers Lewin produced for Hacker’s plan, but they immediately turned on Lewin and began attacking its credibility once Lewin analyzed the actual legislation in the House.What so angered the left was Lewin’s finding that if the government-run plan were open to all employers, 103.4 million Americans would find themselves with government run insurance, including 88.1 million Americans who would lose their current employer-sponsored private coverage. What angered the left so much about this finding was that it exposed the fact that there is very little “optional” about the public option. Those 88.1 million Americans would not be the ones choosing the public plan. Instead, it would be their employers who decided to discontinue their current private coverage, leaving the 88.1 million Americans no choice but to enroll in the government plan.The latest version of Obamacare in the House “fixes” this problem by severely limiting who the government can enroll in the government plan. Under the new bill, only employers with 25 employees or fewer are allowed to enroll in the plan in year one (2013), in year two (2014) individuals and employers with 50 employees or fewer become eligible, and in year three (2015) employers with at least 100 employees become eligible. In other words, the vast majority of Americans will not be eligible to enroll in the allegedly “public” plan. Worse still, even the poorest Americans are specifically denied access to the new government plan. The bill does expand Medicaid eligibility to 150% FPL but it also appears to deny access to those who are “eligible” for Medicaid. This simply gives the false impression that poor people will get a choice of better care under this bill. The reality is all they get is a chance to join the substandard government-run Medicaid plan.With these restrictions, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that under the current bill (H.R. 3962) only 6 million people would enroll in the government plan. The Lewin Group has not analyzed H.R. 3962, but did estimate earlier that if a public plan was only open to employers with no more than 20 employees, 21 million people would enroll. The difference between the two numbers comes largely from the fact that the CBO estimates that the public plan would have higher, not lower, premiums than private plans. Since the left in Congress has chosen to make the public option the defining issue of the health care debate, millions of Americans are set to be sorely disappointed if Obamacare passes and they suddenly learn that they are not eligible for the so-called public option they have been sold. The scariest part of Obamacare, however, is that the legislation also empowers the new Health Czar to unilaterally rewrite the regulations so that the public option can turn into President Barack Obama’s dream of “Everybody in, Nobody out” government run health care.

Health Care Reform Cost Estimates: What is the Track Record?

2009-10-28T12:36:00.000-05:00

President Barack Obama has promised the American people that his health care plan “will help bring our deficits under control in the long term.” But so far, the cost estimates coming out of the Congressional Budget Office are not matching up with Obama’s rhetoric. The latest CBO scoring of the Senate’s leading bill, Dodd-Kennedy, estimates that Obamacare will add $597 billion over just the next ten years. Meanwhile, CBO director Doug Elmendorf has said the House health plan will increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over ten years, and “generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.”
But a fair-minded person may ask: But those are just cost estimates; what is the federal government’s track record when it comes to accurately measuring the future costs of health care programs? Well, the Senate Joint Economic Committee has released a report studying exactly that issue, and they found that health care plan costs are always dramatically underestimated. From the report:
Medicare (hospital insurance). In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990.v Actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] experience was 165% higher than the estimate.”
Medicare (entire program). In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, launched the previous year, would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 10.
Medicaid DSH program. In 1987, Congress estimated that Medicaid’s disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments—which states use to provide relief to hospitals that serve especially large numbers of Medicaid and uninsured patients—would cost less than $1 billion in 1992. The actual cost that year was a staggering $17 billion. Among other things, federal lawmakers had failed to detect loopholes in the legislation that enabled states to draw significantly more money from the federal treasury than they would otherwise have been entitled to claim under the program’s traditional 50-50 funding scheme.
Medicare home care benefit. When Congress debated changes to Medicare’s home care benefit in 1988, the projected 1993 cost of the benefit was $4 billion. The actual 1993 cost was more than twice that amount, $10 billion.
Medicare catastrophic coverage benefit. In 1988, Congress added a catastrophic coverage benefit to Medicare, to take effect in 1990. In July 1989, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doubled its cost estimate for the program, for the four-year period 1990-1993, from $5.7 billion to $11.8 billion. CBO explained that it had received newer data showing it had significantly under-estimated prescription drug cost growth, and it warned Congress that even this revised estimate might be too low. This was a principal reason Congress repealed the program before it could take effect.
SCHIP. In 1997, Congress established the State Children’s Health Insurance Program as a capped grant program to states, and appropriated $40 billion to be doled out to states over 10 years at a rate of roughly $5 billion per year, once implemented. In each year, some states exceeded their allotments, requiring shifts of funds from other states that had not done so. By 2006, unspent reserves from prior years were nearly exhausted. To avert mass disenrollments, Congress decided to appropriate an additional $283 million in FY 2006 and an additional $650 million in FY 2007

Now they want to call ObamaCare Medicare Part E

2009-10-22T09:38:00.002-05:00

The latest ploy to promote Obamacare is to rename it after something popular. Giving it the title of “Medicare Part E” is the newest tactic.
The package might look different, but inside is the same old stuff: Government-run health care that is so expensive that it threatens our economy today and our future tomorrow.
Although popular, Medicare already is sinking under $38-trillion in unfunded future liabilities. Adding trillions in new spending will make Medicare sink even faster.
Adding Obamacare to Medicare threatens the program that seniors rely upon and lessens the chances of ever fixing Medicare’s financial problems.
Because Medicare lowballs its payments to health providers, it causes them to charge more to other patients to make up the difference. Already, according to the Milliman Group, non-Medicare families already pay an extra $1,800 a year in higher health bills. Shifting millions more people into Medicare would worsen this cost-shifting onto everyone else. It especially hurts health care in rural areas, where Medicare reimbursement rates are the lowest.
The effort to recast their government-run “public option” as part of Medicare shows the dilemma of Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill. Whether they call it Medicare Part E, Happy Health Care, or Santa Claus, a catchy name doesn’t change what they’re doing. Their plan would expand central planning and price controls. It would add tens of thousands of pages of regulations, rules, guidelines, and administrative decisions to the sea of red tape that already jacks up the costs of health care and insurance by creating enormous hidden costs on the system.
Giving their messy plan the name of “Medicare Part E” is only the latest tactic. Each day they try to put a fresh face on the plan, but under the mask it’s always the same old big government and big spending approach.

Heritage Foundation

Rules for a Radical White House

2009-10-21T10:29:00.000-05:00

Politico’s Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report today:
President Obama is working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party, setting loose top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds.

With a series of private meetings and public taunts, the White House has targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending pro-business lobbying group in the country; Rush Limbaugh, the country’s most-listened-to conservative commentator; and now, with a new volley of combative rhetoric in recent days, the insurance industry, Wall Street executives and Fox News.Obama aides are using their powerful White House platform, combined with techniques honed in the 2008 campaign, to cast some of the most powerful adversaries as out of the mainstream and their criticism as unworthy of serious discussion.

We are in no way the first to point this out, but this Obama administration strategy is taken directly from the pages of Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals. It identifies thirteen rules for progressive activists including, “The thirteenth rule: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Explaining just how far progressives must be willing to go to marginalize their “enemies” Alinsky explains a few pages later:
Many liberals during our attack on the then-school superintendent, were pointing out that after all he wasn’t a 100 percent devil, he was a regular churchgoer, he was a good family man, and he was generous in his contributions to charity. Can you imagine in the arena of conflict charging that so-and-so is a racist bastard but then diluting the impact of the attack with qualifying remarks such as, “He is a good churchgoing man, generous to charity and a good husband”? This becomes political idiocy.

And then in his final chapter, Alinsky reveals what progressives really think of the average American: “Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt. They are right.”Contempt for average Americans, and the desire to marginalize their common sense questions is both at the core of the Progessive vision for governance and completely antithetical to the values of our Founding Fathers. Thomas G. West, author of The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science, explains:
The Founders thought that laws should be made by a body of elected officials with roots in local communities. They should not be “experts,” but they should have “most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society” (Madison). The wisdom in question was the kind on display in The Federalist, which relentlessly dissected the political errors of the previous decade in terms accessible to any person of intelligence and common sense.The Progressives wanted to sweep away what they regarded as this amateurism in politics. … Only those educated in the top universities, preferably in the social sciences, were thought to be capable of governing. Politics was regarded as too complex for common sense to cope with. … Only government agencies staffed by experts informed by the most advanced modern science could manage tasks previously handled within the private sphere.…The Progressives did not intend to abolish democracy, to be sure. They wanted the people’s will to be more efficiently translated into government policy. But what democracy meant for the Progressives is that the people would take power out of the hands of locally elected officials and political parties and place it instead into the hands of the central government, which would in turn establish administrative agencies run by neutral experts, scientifically trained, to translate the people’s inchoate will into concrete policies.

This is why you have Obama’s Energy Secretary telling auto makers how they must build cars. This is why Obama’s health care plan empowers a panel of health care “experts” to reorganize one-sixth of our economy from the top down. Commonsense questions like, “Won’t our electricity bills go up if we mandate power companies use more expensive alternative energy sources?”, and “Won’t our health insurance premiums go up if everyone is charged the same price and nobody can be refused coverage?” can’t be tolerated. People voicing such criticisms must be isolated and silenced. That’s what the White House campaign the Politico identifies today is all about

Obamacare Puts You on Welfare - Heritage Foundation - Part 5

2009-10-16T11:08:00.001-05:00

Lost in all of last weeks headlines on how the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) finally delivered a health care product that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was willing to say would reduce the deficit, was how exactly they achieved it. At a price tag of $829 billion, the SFC ’framework’ will reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 29 million, moving the overall percentage of nonelderly Americans with health insurance from 83% in 2010 to 94% in 2019. But of those 29 million with new insurance coverage, almost half (14 million), will get their coverage through the welfare programs Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). That is equivalent to adding every resident of Ohio and Nevada to the welfare rolls.

In other words, for half of those Americans who are being promised health reform, they are going to be stunned to find themselves in a welfare office applying for Medicaid. Under the current baselines for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), there will be 76 million individuals served by these programs for at least some part of the year in 2019. If the SFC proposal becomes law, the number on Medicaid/SCHIP will top 90 million. So why do Obamacare supporters want to put 90 million Americans on the welfare rolls? It is cheaper than providing them with real quality health care.Medicaid was originally created to provide access to health care for families on welfare. Medicaid pays providers 20-25 percent less than does the private sector, forcing doctors and hospitals to subsidize Medicaid through lower rates. This deters doctors and hospitals from participating in the program, creating a lack of access that itself is a form of rationing. As Time magazine reported this July: “But there are real questions as to whether the program could handle the strain of that many new clients. Already, it is difficult in some areas to find health-care providers who are willing to accept Medicaid patients.”Even those who are not pushed into welfare will feel the strain on the health care system. The majority of individuals moved into Medicaid will be young and healthy. Keeping them on welfare rolls will shift even more costs to individuals and families buying private health insurance, as doctors and hospitals recoup their losses from Medicare/SCHIP by charging more to the privately insured. In effect, the congressional policy seems to be to expand dependency by discriminating against individuals based on their income.And then there is the effect on states. The CBO estimates that the Finance Committee plan will cost states $33 billion over 10 years. But even that may be a low estimate. Governor Phil Bredesen (D-TN) has warned that the costs for his state alone could be as high as $3 billion. Thanks to strings attached to Obama’s failed stimulus, states already are facing an erosion of their authority to manage their Medicaid programs. The true cost to taxpayers in the states will only become apparent as spending for education, child welfare, public health, and investment in transportation systems and infrastructure are crowded out over time.As Heritage Senior Fellow Dennis Smith reminds us:
In June, President Obama told Senate Democrats, “As we move forward on health care reform, it is not sufficient for us simply to add more people to Medicare or Medicaid.” Unfortunately, that is precisely what Congress is going to do with the Baucus proposal

Obamacare forces the funding of abortions - Heritage Foundation - Part 4

2009-10-15T11:34:00.003-05:00

"Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions,” Or so President Barack Obama promised to the American people in his health care address before a Joint Session of Congress on September 9th. But then why did the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops send a letter to Congress on October 8th writing: “No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion. … No current bill meets this test”?

Who is telling the truth? The President or the Bishops? Last Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked this question during his daily press briefing and answered: “Well, I don’t want to get me in trouble at church, but I would mention there’s a law that precludes the use of federal funds for abortion that isn’t going to be changed in these health care bills.” Unsatisfied, the CNS News’ Fred Lucas again pressed on Friday:
The Catholic bishops have repeatedly said that the Hyde amendment would not apply to the health care bill and yesterday in the letter that they sent to Congress they said that if language expressly prohibiting abortion funding is not added to the health care bill, they will vigorously — “vigorously oppose” — that’s a quote — the bill. My question on that, does the President support the bishops on this?
Gibbs replied:
My answer isn’t different than it was on Wednesday. There may be a legal interpretation that has been lost here, but there’s a fairly clear federal law prohibiting the federal use of money for abortion. I think it is — again, it’s exceedingly clear in the law.
How to put this politely … it is safe to say that Gibbs’ above statement is less than true. The next time anyone tries to convince you that the White House is telling the truth ask them where exactly in the Federal Code it says this. The truth is…it doesn’t.But what about the Hyde amendment mentioned by the White House reporter? Is the Hyde amendment not the law of the land? No, it is not even a statute. First passed in 1976 by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) as a rider to the Health and Human Services appropriations bill, the Hyde amendment must be passed again every year as part of the HHS appropriations bill and even then it only applies to current HHS programs. The Hyde amendment would do nothing to stop Obamacare from funding abortions and all the versions of Obamacare passed by Congressional committees so far do exactly that.Conservatives introduced amendments in all five committee markups (three in the House and two in the Senate) that would have specifically prohibited federal funds from being used to cover abortion. None of them passed. Worse, the “compromise” the White House has adopted is an amendment sponsored by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) who has a 100% pro-abortion voting record according to the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Not only does the Capps amendment allow for federal money to subsidize abortions in private plans and mandate federal funding for abortions in the public option (this according to FactCheck.org), it also requires that at least one insurance plan cover abortion in every geographical region in the country.In 2007, then candidate Barack Obama promised Planned Parenthood: “We’re gonna set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services including reproductive services. … We will also subsidize those who choose to stay in the private insurance market, except, the insurers are going to have to abide by the same rules in terms of providing comprehensive care including reproductive care.”
A Rasmussen poll released last month showed that only 13% of Americans want the health-care reform bill to use tax dollars to fund abortions, clearly demonstrating that even most pro-choice believers do not favor taxpayer funded abortions. A Pew Research Center poll two weeks ago showed that support for legalized abortion has dropped to its lowest level in years to 47%, down from 54% last year. Obama can either please NARAL and Planned Parenthood or he can honor the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Americans. He can’t do both.

It's All Downhill From Here- Heritage Foundation-Part 3

2009-10-14T17:09:00.003-05:00

This Morning Bell is the third in a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you.
The scariest part about yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee vote passing its version of Obamacare, is not what is in their bill (to the extent that it even exists), but that the Finance Committee bill promises to be the high water mark for “bipartisanship” in health care reform.

Now all of the other bills will be merged together behind the closed doors. All the bills are fundamentally flawed and will only get worse as the leaders in the House and Senate have to commit to actual details.

COST — All the proposals carry a hefty price tag. The Finance bill estimates start at $829 billion. Preliminary estimates of the House Tri-Committee bill put the price tag over $1 Trillion and adding another $245 billion to the deficit. Preliminary estimates of the HELP Committee bill would add $598 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. And the outlook for the following ten years looks far far worse.EMPLOYER MANDATE - More spending means more taxes. All the proposals include new taxes on employers. Taxes on employers will ultimately result in lower wages, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth. According to The Heritage Foundation, the mandates, like those in the House bill, could cost businesses up to $49 billion a year, 10.2 million workers will be at risk of slower wage growth and cuts in other benefits, and as many as 9 million low-wage and part-time workers will lose their employer-based health insurance.PUBLIC PLAN - All the proposals include the creation of a new government health plan. The Finance proposal calls it a co-op while the House Tri-Committee bill and the Senate HELP Committee all call it a new public plan. Despite what activists on the left claim, a government run health insurance “option” will not be on a level playing field with other private options. The playing field will be skewed to push millions of Americans out of their current private health insurance and into the government run plan.INDIVIDUAL MANDATE - All the proposals force every Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, some even threatening jail time if they do not comply. Such a mandate is a massive tax increase on individuals and families whose health insurance does not meet the new federally determined standards. This means that Congress will, for the first time in U.S. history, force Americans to buy federally designed packages of health benefits, even if they do not want or need those benefits.MEDICAID EXPANSION - Hidden in all the proposals is a massive expansion of the Medicaid program. The result is millions more Americans would be dependent on this growing entitlement program. This means more costs to taxpayers, less flexibility for the states, and worsening markets for the privately insured.MEDICARE CUTS - All the proposals depend heavily on billions in Medicare cuts to pay for their versions of Obamacare. Traditionally, such cuts rarely come to fruition. Special interests lobby to stop any real cuts from occurring after the bill is passed. And some so-called fraud, waste and abuse cuts, like those to the Medicare Advantage, will put millions of seniors’ benefits at risk.Do high costs, government expansion, huge tax increases, major unfunded expansions in Medicaid and major cuts to Medicare sound like a recipe for success? It’s all downhill from here

Link to full Price Waterhouse Report on Obamacare

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/pwc_report_on_Costs_final_101109.pdf?sid=ST2009101102325

“Reform” Means You Pay More for Health Care - Heritage Foundation-Part 2

2009-10-14T13:56:00.000-05:00

A major new report confirms the worst fears of many: Health care reform will raise the costs for most Americans—by about 18% on average. That is on top of existing inflation of health coverage.
Once the plan is fully phased-in (by 2019), a typical family of four would pay an extra $4,000 each year.
When combined with existing inflation, costs would rise from today’s $12,300 annual average to $25,900. Of that 111% increase, $9,600 is due to existing factors uncorrected by the legislation, and $4,000 due to additional costs created by the legislation.
For single persons, the differential is projected at $1,500 a year. Premiums would rise from today’s $4,600 a year to $9,600 overall.
Prepared by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), the new analysis was requested by AHIP—America’s Health Insurance Plans. It focuses on the leading plan pending in Congress, sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D, MT), which is scheduled for a Senate Finance Committee vote on Tuesday. The PWC report can be read here.
The PWC projections track what The Heritage Foundation and many others have said about the legislation: It does not save money. It simply taxes those who have health coverage and uses the money to give care to others.
The White House is said to be livid. After all, President Obama’s claims that he makes care more affordable are exposed as a myth by the new study. Lawmakers claim the bill would “save” money, but that’s not true for those who have insurance. The only “savings” would be to those who receive government-paid health care and subsidies at the cost of higher prices for everyone else. (Even if the legislation “reduced the deficit”, it would do so by making citizens pay more, not by controlling government spending.)
Despite the enormous costs, estimates say 25-million people would remain uninsured under the Baucus bill. The new study also criticizes the Baucus plan for not placing tougher mandates and penalties on those who do not buy health insurance, which would help spread the costs (and create new customers for insurers). PWC reports higher costs would occur due to these parts of the bill:
Requirements to cover pre-existing conditions with guaranteed-issue insurance
The new tax created on so-called “high cost” health care plans
The new taxes on medical devices and other segments of health care
Reduction in Medicare payments, which care providers would offset by raising rates on their other patients.
The report will be denounced as a political attack by the insurance industry. But the real attack is Washington’s assault on our pocketbooks and our freedoms

Obamacare Invades your wallet-Part 1

2009-10-12T16:55:00.000-05:00

This Morning Bell is the first in a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you.-Heritage Foundation analysis
Throughout his campaign, and even in to the first few months in office, President Barack Obama repeatedly promised the American people that his health care plan would reduce their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It has been a while since President Obama made that promise, and any honest look at the health legislation being considered in Congress explains why.
The Senate Finance Committee bill written by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) (the Baucus bill) first drives up the cost of health insurance for all Americans and then forces everyone to buy it or face tax penalties or jail time. While the Baucus bill does cap out-of-pocket costs based on a person’s income, the effect on American families is still staggering. According to the Center for Data Analysis, the Baucus bill would:
For individuals making $34,140 (three times the Federal Poverty Level) the Baucus health care proposal could mandate up to $4,097 in annual premiums, a sum which could have been spent on over nine months of food, almost four months of housing or well over a year of utilities.
For a family of four making $69,480 (300% above poverty) the Baucus bill mandates annual health insurance premiums of $8,338, which would be worth the equivalent of over ten months of food, four months of housing or almost two years of utilities.
For individuals earning $45,520(400% above poverty) Baucus mandates $5,462 for health insurance, or over a year of food, four months of rent or a year and a half of utilities.
For families earning $92,640 (400% above poverty) Baucus mandates $11,117 in health premiums, the equivalent of over a year of food, five months of housing or two years of utilities.
And those numbers include the subsidies for health insurance in the Baucus bill. To pay for all this new health care spending, plus the massive expansion of Medicaid, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Baucus bill will collect $4 billion in fines from those who do not purchase insurance, $200 billion taxing health insurance companies with generous health plans, and $25 billion in taxes on employers. Not to mention the billions in cuts to Medicare payments to hospitals which will result in significant cost shifting to consumers.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has done a study on what all these new taxes and regulations will do to Americans health insurance premiums and the results are not pretty. Instead of reducing the average family’s health insurance premiums by $2,500 per year, as President Obama promised, the Baucus bill would actually raise them by $4,000 more than they would have been without reform.
The Baucus bill spends at least $1 trillion, fails to cover all Americans, taxes employers for creating jobs, and inflicts higher out-of-pocket health care costs on all Americans. We can do better.

Obamacare: The fallacy

2009-10-06T10:22:00.001-05:00

Obamacare takes all ’savings’ from Medicare reform and immediately plows them into a new deficit exploding entitlement. More importantly, it preserves the old fee-for-service Medicare program which is based on central planning and price controls

Polling Data shows government ethics and corruption as major issue

2009-10-02T16:54:00.003-05:00

For nearly two years, economic issues have held the top spot in terms of importance among voters.
But the latest national telephone survey shows that 83% now view government ethics and corruption as very important, placing it just ahead of the economy on a list of 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. Eighty-two percent (82%) of voters see the economy as very important.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/importance_of_issues

Iran finally tells IAEA of Qom facility/Sarkozy's Contempt for BO

2009-09-30T10:46:00.002-05:00

Vienna/Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency it is building a second, previously unknown, uranium enrichment plant, days before the country was scheduled to hold talks with world powers.
Leaders of the United States, Britain and France reacted harshly to Iran's late admission, with Obama saying that the layout of the new plant that has been built for several years was 'inconsistent' with use in a civilian nuclear power program.
'Iran's nuclear program is the most urgent proliferation challenge the world faces today,' British Premier Gordon Brown said at a joint press conference with Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Brown said that the 'the level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve.'
The revelation came at a sensitive juncture in Tehran's relations with China, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the US, which are preparing for talks with Iran on October 1 in Geneva, aimed at improving relations, but also at touching on that country's controversial nuclear program..
Until now the international public was only aware of the operating enrichment plant in Natanz, which some countries fear could one day be used to make material for nuclear arms.
Iran admitted to the new site near the city of Qom, the spiritual capital of Iran, on Monday after finding out that Western intelligence agencies knew about the project, according to a US official and to a diplomat briefed on Western intelligence findings.
'Everything, everything must be put on the table now' by December, Sarkozy said. Otherwise Iran would face new sanctions. Britain and the US are also ready to push for new punitive measures if needed.
Under IAEA regulations, Tehran would have been obliged to inform the nuclear agency about such projects as soon as a decision is taken to build it. However, Iran has previously declared it is not following this rule.

Background: New Iranian Nuclear Facility
The new facility is located near Qom[1], a town south of Tehran, according to Western intelligence agencies, and is big enough to house 3,000 centrifuges.
'That is what is needed to make (material for) a bomb a year, but not enough for a nuclear reactor,' a diplomat briefed on the intelligence said.
Tehran maintains that it is enriching uranium only as fuel for nuclear electricity generation.
The UN Security Council has applied three rounds of sanctions on Iran in an unsuccessful effort to get the country to stop its enrichment activities at Natanz, a site that only became known after an exiled Iranian opposition group revealed it in 2002.
A US official said Iran opted to build the second site after Natanz was exposed and subjected to IAEA inspections. 'So the obvious option for Iran would be to build another secret underground facility,' the official said. 'Not surprisingly, we found one.'
US intelligence was aware of it from the beginning but waited until it could be 'undeniably' shown it was for weapons grade uranium, he said.
In past years, a number of nuclear arms experts have described a scenario in which Iran would use a secret installation to make material for a nuclear bomb, while letting the world believe the known Natanz site is the only enrichment facility it has.
'It's catastrophic,' said Andreas Persbo, a London-based nuclear arms control expert, reacting to the revelations.
'It just shows that the worst fears of hawks in Western intelligence agencies have come true,' he said.
Obama has sought to reach out to Iran to begin negotiations on the contentious issue that has been on the top of the international agenda for years. He reaffirmed Friday his desire to reach a diplomatic solution.
Iran has firmly rejected demands to stop enriching uranium.
China and Russia in the past have been reluctant to back strong Security Council measures on against Iran, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signalled a willingness to get tougher since Obama announced September 17 that he was dropping Bush-era plans to base a long-range missile-defense system in Eastern Europe.
A Medvedev spokesperson in Moscow said Friday of the latest revelation about Iranian uranium enrichment: 'How could we not be worried?'
Medvedev has already observed that 'in some cases imposition of sanctions cannot be avoided.' Some Russian media observers said Moscow may be willing to help impose sanctions, in return for the US shelving its Polish- and Czech-based missile defense shield plans.
The information about the Qom site was contained in a letter sent Monday to the Vienna-based IAEA, the organization confirmed.
The letter did not provide the location of the new plant, but said additional information would be provided 'in an appropriate and due time.'
The level of enrichment indicated in the letter would mean Iran was enriching uranium to a standard for use in nuclear power plants, but not in nuclear weapons.
'In response, the IAEA has requested Iran to provide specific information and access to the facility as soon as possible,' IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Pittsburgh she was 'concerned' and echoed the IAEA's call for prompt cooperation.
The diplomat briefed on Western intelligence said the plant was unlikely to start operating before next year, while another diplomat said it seemed Iran would need at least 6 months to start running the facility.
According to the IAEA, no nuclear material has likely been introduced at the newly disclosed location, and a diplomat said no equipment for enrichment had been installed yet.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cancelled a press conference scheduled for later Friday at United Nations headquarters in New York, and Iran's ambassador in Vienna was not available for an interview.
All diplomats and officials speaking with the German Press Agency

September 29, 2009
Sarkozy's Contempt for Obama
By Jack Kelly
The contempt with which the president of France regards the president of the United States was displayed in public last week.
Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24).
"We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth," President Obama said.
What infuriated President Sarkozy was that at the time Mr. Obama said those words, Mr. Obama knew the mullahs in Iran had a secret nuclear weapons development site, and he didn't call them on it.
‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons...but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite," Mr. Sarkozy said.
"Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions," Mr. Sarkozy said. "North Korea has been defying Council resolutions since 1993."
"What good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community?" he asked rhetorically. "More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe out a UN member state off the map."
If the Security Council had imposed serious sanctions on the regimes which are flouting UN resolutions, the resolution Mr. Obama proposed about working toward nuclear disarmament wouldn't have been so meaningless, Mr. Sarkozy implied.
"If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce or own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons," he said.
The extent of BO’s naiveté - or duplicity - was on display Friday at the G20 summit when the president, flanked by Mr. Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, revealed to the American public that Iran had a second nuclear weapons site on a military base near the holy city of Qom.
News reports indicated BO had been briefed on the site before his inauguration. But he's been conducting his foreign policy as if the mullahs could be trusted.
"Iran has been put on notice," President Obama said in Pittsburgh.
Iran responded to being "put on notice" by testing Monday two ballistic missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead 1,200 miles.
It was to protect Europe from such missiles that the ABM system President Obama abruptly cancelled earlier this month was designed.
The BO administration officials said the ABM cancellation - regarded as a betrayal by Poland and the Czech Republic, where the missiles and radars were to be located - actually improved U.S. security, because it has made Russia more amenable to sanctions against Iran.
The UN Security Council has never passed strong sanctions against Iran because Russia and China have vetoed them. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he still doesn't like economic sanctions, but will support them if diplomacy fails. China remains opposed.
BO shouldn't count on Russian support, said Soviet expert David Satter.
"Words are cheap for the Kremlin and the Iranians are aware of this," he said. "The Russians, having endorsed sanctions, will now find hundreds of reasons why any specific sanctions package is unfair...The reason is that support for Iran is Russia's most important trump card in foreign relations and there is little likelihood they will give it up."
Iran has been put on notice before. At the G8 meeting in Italy in July, Mr. Obama and other leaders set a "firm deadline" of Sep. 10 for the Iranians to make a serious offer to negotiate about their nuclear program. When the mullahs blew him off, Mr. Obama quietly extended the deadline until December.
December could be too late. "Tehran soon could have humankind's most frightening weapon if substantial diplomatic progress is not made in the coming days," Rep. Howard Berman (D-Cal), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Saturday (9/26).
If severe economic sanctions are not imposed immediately, in months if not in weeks, only a military strike will b e able to prevent an Iranian bomb.
But after sternly lecturing Iran on its international obligations Friday, President Obama didn't call for sanctions. He called for more negotiations. And then, as the Iranians were spitting in his eye with the missile test, he jetted off to Copenhagen to lobby to have the 2016 Olympics held in Chicago.
No wonder Nicolas Sarkozy holds Obama him in contempt- much like many US citizens (LWT)
_________________________________________________

[1] Qom is the spiritual and religious capital of Iran and is of particular significance to the Shiites. Iranian clergy (mullahs) and law makers come from Qom

ACORN has man in the White House

2009-09-28T14:36:00.001-05:00

By Matthew Vadum on 9.28.09 @ 6:09AM

Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House.
This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard. He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush’s White House.
Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis’s political director in New York.
Lewis, the current “chief organizer” or CEO of ACORN, was head of New York ACORN from at least 1994 through 2008, when she took over as national leader of ACORN. With Gaspard at work in the White House, Lewis might as well be speaking to President Obama through an earpiece as he goes about his daily business ruining the country.
Erick Erickson of the website RedState recently did an excellent job explaining the relationship of Gaspard to Lewis and President Obama so I won’t take up space here recalling all his valuable insights. Suffice it to say Erickson reported that Gaspard figures prominently in Lewis’s rolodex, which Erickson has in his possession.
Skeptics among you may ask, How do we actually know the low-profile Gaspard, who prefers to work outside the public spotlight and who can hardly be found in Nexis searches at all, was Lewis’s right hand man?

Because Gaspard’s employment with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is acknowledged by no less an authority than ACORN founder Wade Rathke himself. Rathke writes at his blog:
Tell me that 1199’s former political director, Patrick Gaspard (who was ACORN New York’s political director before that) didn’t reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and I’ll tell you to take some remedial classes in “politics 101.”
The “before that” time period Rathke is referring to is 2003 when Gaspard was executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. According to publicly available disclosure documents, Gaspard registered as a federal lobbyist for SEIU on Oct. 22, 2007. The registration and subsequent disclosures indicate he lobbied Congress on SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Incidentally, the lines between ACORN and radical left-wing SEIU, whose acronym stands for Service Employees International Union, become fuzzy in places.
SEIU Locals 100 and 880 are part of the ACORN network of organizations. Local 100 in New Orleans is headed by Rathke. SEIU Local 880 in Chicago is headed by longtime ACORN insider Keith Kelleher.
You’d never know about the SEIU connection from visiting ACORN’s website, www.acorn.org. That’s because the website has been receiving a thorough scrubbing in recent months. On ACORN’s affiliated organizations page, references to the two SEIU locals mysteriously disappeared.
It’s worth noting that Gaspard’s ties to ACORN, SEIU, and Lewis go way back.
According to the Complete Marquis Who’s Who, Gaspard has a long history of political involvement stretching back to at least 1989 when he volunteered for the David Dinkins mayoral campaign in New York City. In 2003 he became acting field director for Howard Dean’s presidential bid. He was national field director in 2004 for America Coming Together, a now-defunct get-out-the-vote operation that received a $775,000 fine for campaign finance abuses. In 2006 Gaspard was acting political director for SEIU International.
Gaspard also worked for New York’s Working Families Party, which is an appendage of ACORN. Lewis is a co-founder of that party — which endorsed Obama last year – and has close ties to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) who has been most reluctant to have the House Judiciary subcommittee he chairs investigate ACORN.
Nadler invented the incredibly creative argument that recent legislative language aimed at depriving ACORN of federal funding constitutes an unconstitutional “bill of attainder.” Perhaps singling out the mafia for a federal funds cutoff would be unconstitutional too in his eyes.
Meanwhile, the American public is beginning to realize that ACORN is a vast criminal conspiracy whose reach extends to the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Obama’s statement that he’s barely aware of ACORN’s problems is nothing short of ridiculous, especially so because Patrick Gaspard was a political director for ACORN New York.
Last year he worked as national political director for the Obama campaign followed by a stint as associate personnel director for the Obama-Biden transition team.
As the old Washington saying goes, politics is personnel. Who knows how many administration officials were put in place by Gaspard with direct input from ACORN’s Bertha Lewis. It boggles the mind.
We also now know the Obama administration was lying about ACORN’s high level involvement in the 2010 Census. The coordination between ACORN and the Census was revealed as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the relentless investigator Tegan Millspaw of Judicial Watch. The Census and other government agencies have cut ties with ACORN as the ACORN scandal widens.
We have to wonder: when it comes to ACORN, what else is the Obama administration lying about?
Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy

Houston Cruise Terminal Sits Empty - Houston News Story - KPRC Houston

2009-09-24T16:32:00.000-05:00

Houston Cruise Terminal Sits Empty - Houston News Story - KPRC Houston

Don't cry for me America

2009-09-24T14:40:00.004-05:00

If the Chinese and Japanese stop buying our bonds, we could easily see inflation go to 15 to 20%.

It's not a question of the economy. It's a question of who will lend us the money if they don't.

Imagine us getting ourselves in a situation where we're totally dependent on those two countries. Is this insane or crazy?

Obama misrepresents tax increase and deficit impact

2009-09-21T13:37:00.000-05:00

Once again, President Obama’s health care rhetoric doesn’t match the reality of congressional Democrats’ costly government takeover of health care. On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday the President repeatedly insisted that requiring Americans to buy government-approved health care does not constitute a tax increase, yet that is exactly what it says in the 1,018-page House bill. What’s more, the idea that an individual mandate is a tax on working families has been confirmed in earlier writings by senior Obama Administration officials. All told, H.R. 3200 contains roughly $820 billion in tax increases, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Cap-and-Tax Cost to American: $1,1761 per Household

2009-09-19T12:12:00.001-05:00

The Obama apparatchik has concluded privately that a cap-and-trade law would cost every American household $1,761 a year — or a national total of nearly $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.
The previously unreleased Treasury Department analysis, which CBS News reported this week, says the new law would require new taxes between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. That’s how Treasury analysts arrived at the $1,761 per household figure.
"Given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually," according to the document, which was written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department's Office of Environment and Energy in January.
Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 percent or 8 percent increase a year.
That finding has been echoed by other internal Obama administration documents on the subject.
"Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation," according to a second memorandum that was prepared for Obama's transition team after the November election.
CBS reported these figures based on documents that the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and released on Tuesday.
Other figures developed in studies for a new cap-and-trade law have been even more prohibitive.
House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated that the additional tax bill would be at least $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, "the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year."
Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who filed the FOIA request, told CBS, "Heritage is saying publicly what the administration is saying to itself privately. It's nice to see they're not spinning each other behind closed doors."
Democrats pushing such legislation, meanwhile, have relied on estimates from MIT's John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family. They insist that tax credits to low-income households could offset part of the bite.
And responding to release of the document, The Environmental Defense Fund issued a statement insisting that the figures ignore the cost savings to consumers from cap-and-trade legislation.
“Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers,” the environmental fund’s statement said. “It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.”
The Democrats are “not telling you the cost — they're not telling you the benefit," says Horner, who wrote the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. "If they don't tell you the cost, and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you? They're just talking about global salvation."

In Remembrance of September 11, 2001

2009-09-11T11:03:00.001-05:00

Remembering September 11 -- 8 Years Later
Thursday September 10, 2009

New York, along with the rest of the world, will pause on September 11th, 2009 to honor the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
It will be a day of sadness, memories, and coming together as a community. Eight years have passed, but we cannot and will not ever forget September 11, 1001.
This year, you can take part in the September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance and perform a good deed to honor the legacies of those lost on 9/11. There are also concerts and memorial services taking place throughout New York City to mark the day

Obama Speech Fact Check - Heritage Foundation, The Foundry

2009-09-11T10:57:00.000-05:00

Fact checking President Barack Obama’s health care speech from last night, the Associated Press reports: “The president’s speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.” That is an understatement. We counted no less than 10 spurious claims made by the President, including:
1. OBAMA: “There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage.”
THE FACTS: On August 8th, President Obama said: “Reform is obviously essential for the 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance.” So did 16 million uninsured people just disappear in the span of two months? Not quite. The problem is that the 46 million number was always highly misleading and the new 30 million number isn’t much better. According to an analysis based on the 2007 Census data there were 45.7 million uninsured people in the U.S. in 2007. But 9.3 million of those were non-citizens. Another 6.4 million actually are enrolled in Medicaid but mistakenly tell the Census they have no health insurance. Another 4.3 million are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP but have not signed up. Another 10 million have no insurance, but also make more than 3X the poverty level. That means only 15.6 million U.S. citizens with incomes below 300% of poverty and that are nor already eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance, are uninsured.
2. OBAMA: “First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”
THE FACTS: First, the statement is just false. According to the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) 4.5 million Americans are covered by Health Savings Accounts. H.R. 3200 gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to make such plans illegal. In both the House Energy and Commerce Committee mark up and the House Ways and Means Committee mark up, Republicans offered amendments that would have guaranteed Americans’ right to keep their Health Saving’s account. All of these amendments were defeated by Democrats on their respective committees. These 4.5 million Americans will lose their insurance under Obamacare
Second, Americans should never forget that Obama is a lawyer. Here is how Obama used to issue the same promise: “Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” See the difference? Obama used to promise that under his plan “you can keep your doctor.” But now Americans are only promised that nothing in the plan “requires you to change what you have.” This is a night and day difference. Obama is correct that nothing in H.R. 3200 requires people to change their insurance. But H.R. 3200 does allow all businesses to shift their employees into the public plan over time. Under a strong public plan 88.1 million people would be shifted from their employer-sponsored coverage to the federal plan.
3. OBAMA: “And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care … That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.”
THE FACTS: Preventative care does not save money. So says the Congressional Budget Office and so says the New England Journal of Medicine.
4. OBAMA: “That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”
THE FACTS: No states require all adults, let alone all citizens, to carry auto insurance. Only those who choose to exercise their privilege to drive are required to purchase auto insurance. Even with that requirement, many still don’t. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a federal individual mandate for health insurance would be unique and unprecedented because it would “impose a duty on individuals as members of society” and would “require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated” by the government. According to President Barack Obama HHS nominee Dr. Sherry Glied: “Developing a system to promptly identify and penalize scofflaws will take effort and ingenuity, particularly in our diverse and mobile country. It may require a degree of intrusiveness and bureaucracy that some will find unpalatable.”
5. OBAMA: “There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”
THE FACTS: H.R. 3200 does not explicitly pay for health benefits for illegal immigrants. It never has, and no one has ever said that it did. The issue is enforcement and the provisions in H.R. 3200 are completely inadequate to ensure that illegal immigrants do not illegally obtain health care through the bill. In the House Ways and Means mark up of H.R. 3200, Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) introduced an amendment that would use two citizenship status verification systems, the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) programs, to establish an individual’s eligibility to obtain the bill’s proposed affordability credits or enroll in the public insurance option. Both programs are currently used to determine citizenship status and eligibility for other public assistance programs. The Heller amendment failed on a straight party-line vote.
6. OBAMA: “And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”
THE FACTS: In all four mark-ups of health care legislation (three in the House and one in the Senate), Conservatives have offered amendments that would have specifically prohibited federal funds from being used to cover abortion. None of them passed. Instead, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) that actually requires at least one insurance plan to cover abortion in every geographical region and requires the newly-created public plan to cover all abortion services. Furthermore, President Obama told Planned Parenthood on July17, 2007: “We’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services.” Candidate Obama either was not telling the truth to Planned Parenthood then or President Obama is not telling the truth to the American people now.
7. OBAMA: “They argue that these private companies can’t fairly compete with the government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won’t be. I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.”
THE FACTS: Obama refutes his own argument in the same paragraph: “It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.” No public university is self-sufficient. None of them rely solely on student tuition. All of them require taxpayer subsidies every year.
8. OBAMA: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”
THE FACTS: According to the Congressional Budget Office, not only does H.R. 3200 increase the deficit by $239 billion in just the first ten years, but CBO director Doug Elmendorf told Congress that the bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee “significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.” And according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, H.R. 3200 would run a $1,010 billion deficit in the second decade.
9. OBAMA: “Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.”
THE FACTS: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that Title VI of the House bill dealing with Medicare program integrity will save just $1.3 billion over ten years. That is roughly how much Medicare spends in a single day. CBO estimates ZERO savings from Subtitle F in the House bill that deals with Medicaid program integrity.
10. OBAMA: “This reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most expensive policies, which will encourage them to provide greater value for the money – an idea which has the support of Democratic and Republican experts. And according to these same experts, this modest change could help hold down the cost of health care for all of us in the long-run.”
THE FACTS: These “fees” are nothing more than taxes hidden behind a thin veil of “fairness” rhetoric. They would actually fall on ordinary Americans, not insurance executives or stockholders. When you buy something that is subject to a sales tax who pays the tax – you or the vendor? Just look at the line “sales tax” on your bill. And if you tax insurance companies the cost is passed through in the same way

Our Dear Leader Will Address School Kids Sept. 8

2009-09-01T15:00:00.002-05:00

You may wish to keep your children out of school on September 8 in Protest.
Source: http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html

Keep your kids out of school on this date as a protest. This is the first step in indoctrinating your kids in the Cult of Personality of Our Beloved Leader, Barack Hussein Obama, the most merciful, Lion of the Masses, Protector of the Common Man and Omnipotent Parental Figure. The U.S. Department of Education, apparently with the expanded role of overtly propagandizing America's youngsters, has thoughtfully prepared "learning materials" for teachers to use in preparation for this historic and truly unprecedented event. They have been very thorough, preparing "Classroom Materials" in two separate packages, one directed at children "preK-6, the other of students in grades 7-12. Note: "preK-6" implies that the Dear Beloved Leader anticipates his message being broadcast to pre-kindergarten children.

The Dual Standard of Ethics

2009-08-29T13:22:00.003-05:00

As I was thinking of the dual standards under which the our media seems to judge Republican and Democrats I become so much more proud of the Republican Party. I think about the need for improvement but we are much better than the gutter that our opposition seems to relish.

Republicans step down from office when ethics charges are FILED not PROVEN

FILED

Ted Stevens, Tom Delay… we force them out, even though many times they are cleared of all charges. (Stevens, Tom DeLay)

Remember that Dan Rostenkowski had to be force out.
Remember Rep. William Jefferson (D, LA) and he ran again and was reelected while federal agents were pulling cash bricks out of his freezer.
Gery Stubbs is the only admitted pedophile who remained in the House (Democrat)
Robert Byrd is the only KKK member to remain in the Senate (Democrat)
Barney Frank ran the only male prostitution ring in Congressional history(Democrat)
Kennedy was the only murderer elected to the Senate after committing murder (Democrat)
Rangel is still there after the interest free loans, the years of tax evasion, the underreporting of his income.

Which Democrat has called for him to step aside?

Ted Stevens left the Senate over far less.

Newt Gingrich was asked to step down after some thousands of dollars went to his PAC instead of his foundation. He was asked to step down by Republicans....and he did.

John Conyers wife is running a huge corruption ring in Michigan. She's been indicted and so has everyone she knows. I wonder when Democrats will ask John Conyers to step aside for the sake of the appearance of impropriety. .......based on their history, I would guess never.

Only a government bureaucracy could mess up a program designed to give away free money

2009-08-26T14:53:00.001-05:00

"Compared to the infinite complexity of healthcare and health-insurance, cash-for-clunkers is kindergarten stuff. You trade in your old car for a new one that gets (slightly) better mileage and the government gives you money - between $3,500 and $4,500. How hard is that?" Too hard for government bureaucrats, it turns out. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has boasted that the cash-for-clunkers program provided "a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work.'' But look at the deeds, not the words. Last week, cash-for-clunkers ended in a bureaucratic morass of red tape, failed promises and unanticipated costs.

Only a government bureaucracy could mess up a program designed to give away free money.

The government wizards who set up cash-for-clunkers initially budgeted to sell 250,000 cars in three months. The program sold that many in four days. And because the central planners who think they can provide government "competition" to the private health insurance market failed to accurately estimate how many government workers it would take to administer cash-for-clunkers, they had to take employees from the FAA - air traffic controllers, no less - to help manage the demand. And what about the car dealerships the program was supposed to help in the first place? Even though the rebates were supposed to be paid within 10 days, only 7 percent of federal promises under cash-for-clunkers have been paid so far, leaving dealers with millions of dollars in unfunded government promises.

But there's more to the cautionary tale of cash-for-clunkers than just bureaucratic incompetence. This is a case study in what happens when politicians get involved in the marketplace. Despite all the rhetoric of jump starting the auto industry, politicians' priorities are to give free goodies to their constituents. So as far as they're concerned, cash-for-clunkers has been a resounding success. Forget the fact that they're spending money they don't have, or that car dealerships are left holding millions of dollars in empty government promises. They're not concerned with the long-term, just the next election.

So tell us again why should we think bureaucrats and politicians will perform any better with our health care?

Trends: Obama, Manufactured Crisis, and the road to socialism

2009-08-22T12:19:00.001-05:00

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” --Rahm Emmanuel, chief of staff for President-elect Barack Obama, 2008

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."-- Norman Thomas, 1948 Socialist candidate for President

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.
~ Vladimir Lenin

2009-08-21T11:44:00.001-05:00

I think taxpayer-funded lobbying is perhaps the most egregious activity in which local governments engage. Clear Lake Republicans would like your thoughts and input. Please join this blog and give yours thoughts.

ObamaCare- Let me get this straight

2009-08-20T11:14:00.004-05:00

Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it.
It was passed by a Congress that hasn't read it.
Congress will be exempt from the plan.
It will be signed by a president who smokes.
It will be funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes.
It will beoverseen by a surgeon general who is obese.
And it will be financed by a country that is broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

Obamacare Memo on Sex Change Operations Coverage

2009-08-12T09:03:00.002-05:00

The Obama administration’s favorite think tank published a new memo on health care reform yesterday: LGBT Issues in Health Reform. The Center for American Progress goes on to write:
Transgender individuals with access to health insurance can rarely find coverage that fully meets their health care needs. Most insurance plans, both private and public, do not cover the costs associated with transitioning, or moving from one gender to another. … Current proposals for health care reform incorporate a council comprised of health experts to determine minimum standards for health insurance benefits packages. Congress should encourage the council to develop inclusive guidelines that address the health needs of transgender Americans.
That’s right: the left wants to add sex change operations to the list of medical procedures that all health insurance policies in the nation must cover. Specific benefit mandates are one of the driving forces behind exploding health insurance premiums. The Council for Affordable Health Insurance explains why:
While mandates make health insurance more comprehensive, they also make it more expensive because mandates require insurers to pay for care consumers previously funded out of their own pockets. … Mandating benefits is like saying to someone in the market for anew care, if you can’t afford a Lexus loaded with options, you have to walk. Having the Lexus would be nice, as would having health insurance policy that covers everything one might want. But drivers with less money can find other affordable options: whereas when the price of health insurance soars, few other options exist.

Chuchill on Taxation

2009-08-11T17:53:00.001-05:00

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." - Winston Churchill

The White House Fiscal Responsibility Summit

2009-06-10T10:04:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank quipped at the time: “Holding a “fiscal responsibility summit” at the White House in the middle of a government spending spree is a bit like having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at a frat house on homecoming weekend.”

Beware of H. R. 2454- Fight the Cap and Trade Legislation

2009-05-26T14:01:00.002-05:00

In an economic recession when thousands of Americans are losing their jobs on a seemingly daily basis the last thing that the American people need are government rules and regulations passed that will guarantee that even more Americans will lose jobs and more American companies will be less competitive. This is precisely what the current occupant of the White House's proposal indicated. Please go to Cap and Trade related article for more information. This legislation is call the American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009 to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.
In addition to the price of energy skyrocketing under Obama's cap and trade proposal now we learn that there will be less work also as companies head overseas where they are not over-regulated by an over-reaching government.
Wasn't it a campaign promise of Obama for companies not to take work overseas? Now he is proposing legislation that would ensure companies do just that.
The issue of global warming and Cap and Trade legislation, is being used to raise taxes and to regulate the people, but perhaps there is even more to this scam than that. Perhaps this fake issue is also a way to get more people dependent on the government. Perhaps it is designed to take away jobs from the private sector so that more people will rely on their government to provide for them their necessities.
This bill is a disaster waiting to happen, we need somebody to step up and put an end to this nonsense. There is nothing good that will come out of this bill, in fact just the opposite is true. We are headed backwards in this country. Now is the time to stand up and put the breaks on this legislation. Hopefully there are still enough people in congress who realize that America can not afford this type of legislation

Trans-Texas Version 2 Begins

2009-05-22T16:51:00.001-05:00

SB 404 and SB 17 Must be Defeated

Two bills needed by TxDoT to build toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor – 69, or I-69 are scheduled for a vote on Friday, May 22 in the House.
These two bills are critical to TxDoT and the lobbyists who are pushing our state into Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) called CDAs or Comprehensive Development Agreements.
Last week, the House overwhelming voted to repeal the Trans-Texas Corridor for good in an amendment to HB 300, the Sunset transportation bill. However, the Senate has done a typical sleazy deal and entirely re-written the Sunset Bill with everything TxDoT wants and needs to continue business as usual.
SB 404 and SB 17 are two bills the Senate hopes we will ignore. These two bills will resurrect the TTC and other CDA sweetheart deals for the next 50 years if not stopped in the House on Friday.

SB 855 is Dead

2009-05-22T15:11:00.001-05:00

From Larry Tobin,

Rep. John E. Davis sent me an email a few minutes ago to inform me that SB 855 was dead. This was the bill passed in the Senate that would open the door to raising taxes on gasoline by as much as 15 cents per gallon statewide and 10 cents per gallon locally.