With warmest thanks to the immensely brave men and women in the United States' armed forces who have given their lives so that we may sleep safely in our beds at night.
Uncountable thanks as well to all who have defended us in the past, who are defending us now, and especially to those who have suffered injuries while trying to protect us.
We owe you and your families the most unpayable debt.
THE GATESTONE INSTITUTE
Monday, May 28, 2012
Blog Free or Die! *update*
The bastard Brett Kimberlin and others think they can silence you with intimidation and violence. Stand and fight. Speech is free as long as you fight for it. Buy the shirt here!
*update* Check out links to shirts!
SOURCE: The Morlock Revolt
*update* Check out links to shirts!
SOURCE: The Morlock Revolt
Top U.S. Government Officials Admit that Our Government Has Repeatedly Protected Drug Smugglers
From a 60 Minutes special with Mike Wallace reporting:
Watch the first 3 minute and 20 second segment of the following video:
And see this and this.
It's not just the U.S. Empires commonly fund their covert operations with drugs.
SOURCE: Zero Hedge
Watch the first 3 minute and 20 second segment of the following video:
And see this and this.
It's not just the U.S. Empires commonly fund their covert operations with drugs.
SOURCE: Zero Hedge
Veterans Overwhelmingly Back Romney
A new Gallup survey finds that U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over President Obama for president by a whopping 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four point edge, 48% to 44%.
SOURCE: Political Wire
SOURCE: Political Wire
Aussie Climate Commish: Pull Teeth From Dead People Because Of Mercury
Shockingly, Tim Flannery doesn’t link this to the climate change (hoax) (note-the story originally comes from the Australian Herald Sun, but you need a paid subscription to read it)
(FoxNY) Australia’s chief climate commissioner says mercury tooth fillings should be removed from corpses before they are cremated.
The practice should be made law, Professor Tim Flannery said.
“You don’t want to poison people when you are cremated,” he said. “No one would want that.” (snip)
“You just need a pair of pliers,” he said. “It is a $2 solution.”
He actually has a point
“For mercury to become dangerous, it has to get into the atmosphere, which happens when we are cremated, then blow over the oceans [and] go into the ocean depths, where there is very low oxygen, and then transform by bacteria into a methylated form of mercury,” Flannery said.
“This is then ingested by fish and the fish get put on the dinner plate.”
As an environmentalist, I take his point seriously. Mercury can cause all sorts of health and environmental issues. But, as the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt points out, if mercury is so bad, why are governments all over the world pushing these, including by legislation?
SOURCE: Pirates Cove
(FoxNY) Australia’s chief climate commissioner says mercury tooth fillings should be removed from corpses before they are cremated.
The practice should be made law, Professor Tim Flannery said.
“You don’t want to poison people when you are cremated,” he said. “No one would want that.” (snip)
“You just need a pair of pliers,” he said. “It is a $2 solution.”
He actually has a point
“For mercury to become dangerous, it has to get into the atmosphere, which happens when we are cremated, then blow over the oceans [and] go into the ocean depths, where there is very low oxygen, and then transform by bacteria into a methylated form of mercury,” Flannery said.
“This is then ingested by fish and the fish get put on the dinner plate.”
As an environmentalist, I take his point seriously. Mercury can cause all sorts of health and environmental issues. But, as the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt points out, if mercury is so bad, why are governments all over the world pushing these, including by legislation?
SOURCE: Pirates Cove
Bush Was Right (in 2000)
Let’s make foreign policy like it’s 2000. I think we will support our troops and vets by revisiting the foreign policy that former President Bush expressed in 2000. Otherwise, we will send brave hearts into vain battles.
In October, 2000, George W. Bush debated Al Gore on C-SPAN. He said:
“I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying: ‘We do it this way, so should you.’ … It really depends upon how our nation conducts itself on foreign policy; if we’re an arrogant nation they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. …Somalia started out as a humanitarian mission then changed into a nation-building mission and that’s where the mission went wrong; the mission was changed, and, as a result, our nation paid a price and so I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. …If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world and [conducting] nation-building missions, then we are going to have a serious problem coming down the road and I’m going to prevent that.”
As we know, Bush did not fulfill his 2000 foreign policy goals. I think he was right to enter Afghanistan and route the Taliban immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Unfortunately, he overextended our stay and his executive reach. Today, Bush’s successor, President Obama, is proof that Bush was right in 2000. For, Obama’s efforts to ramp up Bush’s post-2000 expansionism are failing.
This month, Obama gathered his NATO partners in Chicago and signed an agreement that hands major combat operations over to Afghan security forces by the summer of 2013. (So much for consulting Congress and the Constitution.)
Nearly 11 years of war and $642 billion dollars are the temporal and monetary costs to U.S. taxpayers for the War in Afghanistan. No metric, however, quantifies the cost of elongated war to U.S. troops and veterans.
Obama should never have sent an additional 33,000 troops to risk their lives in this hopeless region in 2010. This month, bipartisan leaders of the congressional intelligence committee reported that the Taliban has become stronger since Obama’s troop surge. And, American troops are increasingly dying at the hands of our allies. Since 2007, around 80 Americans have died at the hands of our Afghan “partners.”
I think Obama should tell Americans the truth about Afghanistan. The RAND Corporation recently produced a study for the Pentagon: “The study says violence initially increases after U.S. special forces go into an area to root out insurgents. After the Americans withdraw and leave behind a police unit, violence usually falls [back] to the level before U.S. teams first intervened, the study found,” conveys the Chicago Tribune.
Obama should bring the troops home now—not in the summer of 2013. He can better utilize our troops on the U.S.-Mexico border where drug cartel violence threatens American ranchers, farmers and the U.S. food supply.
By keeping our troops and resources abroad, Obama is perpetuating a situation where current and former armed forces deal with suicidal depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A U.S. vet commits suicide every 80 minutes, according to a recent estimate by the Department of Veteran Affairs.
The number of off-duty soldiers who are dying in PTSD-induced car accidents when they return to the U.S. is soaring. “…Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are unique [compared to other vets], for one major reason: Their combat experiences were frequently defined by dangers on the road, particularly from roadside bombs. …returning troops may be reflexively applying driving techniques …[such as] speeding up at intersections to avoid gunfire or scanning the roadside for danger instead of watching the road ahead,” reports the New York Times.
Have you ever heard of Spc. Dennis Weichel? I bet not. If Obama appreciated the extreme stress and sacrifice that our troops are undergoing overseas, he would have made a bigger deal of 29-year-old Weichel who recently gave up his life to save a 10-year-old Afghan boy named Zaiullah. Weichel had three young children of his own yet he dove to save Zaiullah from a massive armored vehicle that ran him over instead. The New York Times reports: “…the military in Afghanistan debated whether to release the details of Weichel’s death—even though he had been promoted to sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star posthumously...”
Or how about Marine Sgt. Gary Stein? Despite nine years of honorable service, Stein received a less-than-honorable discharge and lost most of his benefits for merely questioning (via 11 words on Facebook) Obama’s leadership style—which is characterized by routine dismissal of the Constitution.
Obama is looking out for his reelection. His administration recently allowed Hollywood producers into CIA and Navy SEAL vaults to work on an Osama bin Ladin raid film that was originally scheduled to appear before the November election.
Meanwhile, a 26-year-old prisoner of war named Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho is serving his third year as a Taliban captive in Afghanistan. Bergdahl’s parents are very frustrated. I think our President has his priorities mixed up if Hollywood producers seem to get more attention than the Bergdahls.
Today is Memorial Day. I think we can honor our troops and vets by vowing to abandon an unconstitutional foreign policy that unjustly kills, injures and depresses American armed forces. Let’s start making foreign policy like it’s 2000.
SOURCE: Townhall.com
In October, 2000, George W. Bush debated Al Gore on C-SPAN. He said:
“I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying: ‘We do it this way, so should you.’ … It really depends upon how our nation conducts itself on foreign policy; if we’re an arrogant nation they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. …Somalia started out as a humanitarian mission then changed into a nation-building mission and that’s where the mission went wrong; the mission was changed, and, as a result, our nation paid a price and so I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. …If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world and [conducting] nation-building missions, then we are going to have a serious problem coming down the road and I’m going to prevent that.”
As we know, Bush did not fulfill his 2000 foreign policy goals. I think he was right to enter Afghanistan and route the Taliban immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Unfortunately, he overextended our stay and his executive reach. Today, Bush’s successor, President Obama, is proof that Bush was right in 2000. For, Obama’s efforts to ramp up Bush’s post-2000 expansionism are failing.
This month, Obama gathered his NATO partners in Chicago and signed an agreement that hands major combat operations over to Afghan security forces by the summer of 2013. (So much for consulting Congress and the Constitution.)
Nearly 11 years of war and $642 billion dollars are the temporal and monetary costs to U.S. taxpayers for the War in Afghanistan. No metric, however, quantifies the cost of elongated war to U.S. troops and veterans.
Obama should never have sent an additional 33,000 troops to risk their lives in this hopeless region in 2010. This month, bipartisan leaders of the congressional intelligence committee reported that the Taliban has become stronger since Obama’s troop surge. And, American troops are increasingly dying at the hands of our allies. Since 2007, around 80 Americans have died at the hands of our Afghan “partners.”
I think Obama should tell Americans the truth about Afghanistan. The RAND Corporation recently produced a study for the Pentagon: “The study says violence initially increases after U.S. special forces go into an area to root out insurgents. After the Americans withdraw and leave behind a police unit, violence usually falls [back] to the level before U.S. teams first intervened, the study found,” conveys the Chicago Tribune.
Obama should bring the troops home now—not in the summer of 2013. He can better utilize our troops on the U.S.-Mexico border where drug cartel violence threatens American ranchers, farmers and the U.S. food supply.
By keeping our troops and resources abroad, Obama is perpetuating a situation where current and former armed forces deal with suicidal depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A U.S. vet commits suicide every 80 minutes, according to a recent estimate by the Department of Veteran Affairs.
The number of off-duty soldiers who are dying in PTSD-induced car accidents when they return to the U.S. is soaring. “…Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are unique [compared to other vets], for one major reason: Their combat experiences were frequently defined by dangers on the road, particularly from roadside bombs. …returning troops may be reflexively applying driving techniques …[such as] speeding up at intersections to avoid gunfire or scanning the roadside for danger instead of watching the road ahead,” reports the New York Times.
Have you ever heard of Spc. Dennis Weichel? I bet not. If Obama appreciated the extreme stress and sacrifice that our troops are undergoing overseas, he would have made a bigger deal of 29-year-old Weichel who recently gave up his life to save a 10-year-old Afghan boy named Zaiullah. Weichel had three young children of his own yet he dove to save Zaiullah from a massive armored vehicle that ran him over instead. The New York Times reports: “…the military in Afghanistan debated whether to release the details of Weichel’s death—even though he had been promoted to sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star posthumously...”
Or how about Marine Sgt. Gary Stein? Despite nine years of honorable service, Stein received a less-than-honorable discharge and lost most of his benefits for merely questioning (via 11 words on Facebook) Obama’s leadership style—which is characterized by routine dismissal of the Constitution.
Obama is looking out for his reelection. His administration recently allowed Hollywood producers into CIA and Navy SEAL vaults to work on an Osama bin Ladin raid film that was originally scheduled to appear before the November election.
Meanwhile, a 26-year-old prisoner of war named Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho is serving his third year as a Taliban captive in Afghanistan. Bergdahl’s parents are very frustrated. I think our President has his priorities mixed up if Hollywood producers seem to get more attention than the Bergdahls.
Today is Memorial Day. I think we can honor our troops and vets by vowing to abandon an unconstitutional foreign policy that unjustly kills, injures and depresses American armed forces. Let’s start making foreign policy like it’s 2000.
SOURCE: Townhall.com
Chestnuthill Twp. to reconsider gun-possession ordinance
By Chad Smith
Pocono Record Writer
May 28, 2012
Chestnuthill Township supervisors will consider whether a township ordinance prohibiting guns in the township park should be repealed.
The ordinance may conflict with a state law that says that municipalities don't have the authority to limit the rights of gun owners as long as the owners act in accordance with state gun laws.
The possible conflict of local and state laws was brought to the township's attention by Brodheadsville resident William Gray.
Gray doesn't want to fear being punished if he carries a firearm into Chestnuthill Park, he said. Gray said that, among other reasons, he'd like to have a gun on him in the park in case a rabid animal tries to attack him or his dog.
Gray believes the township rule conflicts with a state law, passed in 1995, that says, "No county, municipality or township may in any manner regulate the lawful ownership possession, transfer or transportation of firearms "¦ when (those firearms are) carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws of this Commonwealth."
None of the Chestnuthill supervisors who passed the gun ordinance is still on the job.
Supervisors may have created the rule before the state law was passed or may not have known such a law existed, said Chris Eckert, a current Chestnuthill Township supervisor. Eckert said township supervisors weren't gung-ho about possibly changing a rule that would allow people to carry guns into the township park and park building. But, Eckert said, if the township rule flies in the face of a state law, supervisors might feel compelled to amend it.
"It's a controversial issue, where you have Second Amendment rights and state laws, and then you have people on the other side of the coin who don't think that it's a good idea that people are carrying guns," Eckert said.
Eckert said supervisors would discuss the issue at their next meeting.
Pocono Record Writer
May 28, 2012
Chestnuthill Township supervisors will consider whether a township ordinance prohibiting guns in the township park should be repealed.
The ordinance may conflict with a state law that says that municipalities don't have the authority to limit the rights of gun owners as long as the owners act in accordance with state gun laws.
The possible conflict of local and state laws was brought to the township's attention by Brodheadsville resident William Gray.
Gray doesn't want to fear being punished if he carries a firearm into Chestnuthill Park, he said. Gray said that, among other reasons, he'd like to have a gun on him in the park in case a rabid animal tries to attack him or his dog.
Gray believes the township rule conflicts with a state law, passed in 1995, that says, "No county, municipality or township may in any manner regulate the lawful ownership possession, transfer or transportation of firearms "¦ when (those firearms are) carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws of this Commonwealth."
None of the Chestnuthill supervisors who passed the gun ordinance is still on the job.
Supervisors may have created the rule before the state law was passed or may not have known such a law existed, said Chris Eckert, a current Chestnuthill Township supervisor. Eckert said township supervisors weren't gung-ho about possibly changing a rule that would allow people to carry guns into the township park and park building. But, Eckert said, if the township rule flies in the face of a state law, supervisors might feel compelled to amend it.
"It's a controversial issue, where you have Second Amendment rights and state laws, and then you have people on the other side of the coin who don't think that it's a good idea that people are carrying guns," Eckert said.
Eckert said supervisors would discuss the issue at their next meeting.
Hart Williams Endorses #BrettKimberlin Methods When it Comes to Political Disagreement
Today is "Blog about Brett Kimberlin day,"
One of my friends, RS McCain, is in hiding with his family for their safety.
And one of the revelations that came today, came from Patterico's Blog. read it and weep:
The phenomenon is called “SWATting,” because it can bring a SWAT team to your front door. SWATting is a particularly dangerous hoax in which a caller, generally a computer hacker, calls a police department to report a shooting at the home of his enemy. The caller will place this call to the police department’s business line, using Skype or a similar service, and hiding behind Internet proxies to make the call impossible to trace. Anxious police, believing they are responding to the home of an armed and dangerous man, show up at the front door pointing guns and screaming orders.
That is exactly what happened to me. It is a very dangerous hoax that could get the target killed
Although I am an L.A. County Deputy D.A., it is certain that I was “swatted” because of my blog and not because of my job. As Andrew Breitbart noted, this happened to two people within the course of a single week: a man in New Jersey and myself. Both of us had had contact with Andrew Breitbart. Both of us were writing about the same story. And both of us received email threats days before we were swatted. The threat to me said, in part: “Please think about your family. This story is not worth it. I can assure you that.”
So, Hart Williams, the Blogger at the Moderate Voice does not care about any of these people because they do not support the same policies he does.
Hart Williams (the Two on the Right) -- Hart Williams Lost Humanity (Two Pics on Left)
There is no rational reason for our society to be tearing itself apart, and yet every indication says that it is. And that leads inevitably to extremely ugly and brutal stuff. BAD IDEA. Do not go there.
While in that self-same post, he mocks Governor Palin (Liberal Misogyny, as mentioned here) and President Reagan.
Hart Williams, you want bi-partisanship with dogs and cats living together? Prove you can do it first.
And he can't, look at his comment as The Moderate Voice:
It is disgusting and despicable to see The Moderate Voice turned into another “meetoo” zombie site for this Right Wing, coordinated attack with intent to destroy one person who allegedly caused Robert Stacy McCain to flee with his family in “fear” and raise a LOT of cash by screaming for donors to contribute.
The particulars do not matter. Only the psy-ops operation, scheduled for today and utterly dominating Memeorandum. And it is despicable to see the Moderate Voice acting as an unwitting accomplice. As to whether Mr. Esmay “knows” that is for him to declare
So, Hart Williams is fine with the tactics of SWATing a Blogger with differing opinions and also threatening a family member of a Blogger at her job.
It is safe to say that Mr. Williams has become what he despised, a True Hater.
Remember this next time someone cries for Bi-partisanship and point to Hart Williams as proof that Democrats and Liberals don't care if Conservatives (and their friends and families) live or die.
My question: Why does Hart Williams endorse Brett Kimberlin's tactics against those he disagrees?
Update 11:04 PST: It seems Hart Williams does not deny he Endorses Brett Kimberlin's methods. In his Post update, Hart Williams is only upset that people are sympathizing with my friend and Patterico. Shame on you Hart Williams.
SOURCE: Valley of the Shadows
One of my friends, RS McCain, is in hiding with his family for their safety.
And one of the revelations that came today, came from Patterico's Blog. read it and weep:
The phenomenon is called “SWATting,” because it can bring a SWAT team to your front door. SWATting is a particularly dangerous hoax in which a caller, generally a computer hacker, calls a police department to report a shooting at the home of his enemy. The caller will place this call to the police department’s business line, using Skype or a similar service, and hiding behind Internet proxies to make the call impossible to trace. Anxious police, believing they are responding to the home of an armed and dangerous man, show up at the front door pointing guns and screaming orders.
That is exactly what happened to me. It is a very dangerous hoax that could get the target killed
Although I am an L.A. County Deputy D.A., it is certain that I was “swatted” because of my blog and not because of my job. As Andrew Breitbart noted, this happened to two people within the course of a single week: a man in New Jersey and myself. Both of us had had contact with Andrew Breitbart. Both of us were writing about the same story. And both of us received email threats days before we were swatted. The threat to me said, in part: “Please think about your family. This story is not worth it. I can assure you that.”
So, Hart Williams, the Blogger at the Moderate Voice does not care about any of these people because they do not support the same policies he does.
There is no rational reason for our society to be tearing itself apart, and yet every indication says that it is. And that leads inevitably to extremely ugly and brutal stuff. BAD IDEA. Do not go there.
While in that self-same post, he mocks Governor Palin (Liberal Misogyny, as mentioned here) and President Reagan.
Hart Williams, you want bi-partisanship with dogs and cats living together? Prove you can do it first.
And he can't, look at his comment as The Moderate Voice:
It is disgusting and despicable to see The Moderate Voice turned into another “meetoo” zombie site for this Right Wing, coordinated attack with intent to destroy one person who allegedly caused Robert Stacy McCain to flee with his family in “fear” and raise a LOT of cash by screaming for donors to contribute.
The particulars do not matter. Only the psy-ops operation, scheduled for today and utterly dominating Memeorandum. And it is despicable to see the Moderate Voice acting as an unwitting accomplice. As to whether Mr. Esmay “knows” that is for him to declare
So, Hart Williams is fine with the tactics of SWATing a Blogger with differing opinions and also threatening a family member of a Blogger at her job.
It is safe to say that Mr. Williams has become what he despised, a True Hater.
Remember this next time someone cries for Bi-partisanship and point to Hart Williams as proof that Democrats and Liberals don't care if Conservatives (and their friends and families) live or die.
My question: Why does Hart Williams endorse Brett Kimberlin's tactics against those he disagrees?
Update 11:04 PST: It seems Hart Williams does not deny he Endorses Brett Kimberlin's methods. In his Post update, Hart Williams is only upset that people are sympathizing with my friend and Patterico. Shame on you Hart Williams.
SOURCE: Valley of the Shadows
How Patronage Ruined the Democratic Party
The following is adapted from the Conclusion of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic, By Jay Cost.
The story told here is not a tale of right and wrong. There are no good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, in this account. American politics is regularly cast in such moralistic terms, but that has not been our approach here. Instead, our focus has been on the factions within American society, and how the Democratic party has transformed the interests of those factions into public policy.
That is the great challenge of a republican system of government such as ours—one in which the people are sovereign and the government operates on their behalf. Such governments are easy to envision in theory but hard to realize in practice. People are fundamentally self-interested, always ready to put themselves over the community, so it is very difficult to devise a government run by people that puts the whole community first.
Our two great political parties—the Democrats and the Republicans—regularly offer public-spirited platforms that are in keeping with those principles, at least on the surface. Even a casual observer of the political scene could not fail to note that both sides couch their arguments in communitarian language: what is good for our national defense, our prosperity, our shared sense of justice, and so on. In other words, both sides publicly argue that everybody would benefit from their particular programs.
Unfortunately, the public faces of both parties often mask some decidedly anti-republican tendencies. Governed only by the ambitions of politicians and a slender set of rules, parties are not constrained to act only on behalf of all the people, and they regularly do not. While the rhetoric of both sides may speak to the public good, behind the scenes Democrats and Republicans are often eager to make deals with various factions within society—if that is what it takes to win.
We have called this practice clientelism—the exchange of votes for governmental favors between a faction and a party. The great oversight of our Constitution was the framers’ failure to anticipate the inevitability of political parties, and thus to provide for better mechanisms to control their behavior. For if a political party is behaving in an anti-republican manner, and it controls the government, then the government—even with all of its checks and balances—will likewise behave in an anti-republican manner.
Opposition to clientelism brought the Democratic party into existence in the 1820s. Andrew Jackson and his allies formed it as a vehicle for their vengeance against the “corrupt bargain” of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, and more generally to fight the public venality of the “Era of Good Feelings,” wherein politicians in Washington and moneymen in New York and Philadelphia seemed to conspire for their own benefit rather than doing the work of the people.
As an alternative, Jackson and his Democrats would stand up for the “humble members of society”—the small farmers, the laborers, and the urban ethnics who did not have connections to get a special deal from the government. While the party lost this identity to the sectional grievances of the late nineteenth century, William Jennings Bryan reignited the old Jacksonian flame at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Later, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt implemented a new philosophy to secure equal treatment for the downtrodden—an active, “progressive” federal government that would reshape society to make it more just. To this day, this remains the public-spirited message of the Democratic party: that the whole country will be better off if all its people are treated equally.
Yet the Democrats wasted little time before committing the very errors they had pledged to rectify. Andrew Jackson’s principle of “rotation in office” evolved from a leveling, democratic institution into the crooked “spoils system” of rewarding political cronies. In time, the spoils system became the foundation for morally bankrupt political machines like Tammany Hall, whose only purpose in winning office was to pay off the supporters who had put it there. The nineteenth-century patronage regime was modernized in the twentieth century by the liberal Democrats who expanded the size and scope of the government with the New Deal. The Democratic party would no longer use mere patronage to reward a few thousand loyalists; now it would take advantage of the massive new regulatory and redistributive powers of Washington to reward millions of new party clients—not only with federal jobs but with beneficial laws that reshaped society to advance their particular interests. The party could take care of whole classes in society—farmers, union workers, urban ethnics—with a single stroke of the presidential pen.
Of course, most voters are not clients of the Democratic party, or of the Republican party for that matter. Most voters expect no special favors after Election Day, and the parties compete for their support only by offering broad-based programs ostensibly designed to benefit all (or, at least, most) Americans. It’s always been this way—even at the height of the New Deal majority, the Democrats could never claim half-plus-one of the public as their clients.
Thus, the political challenge facing modern Democratic leaders is to keep the party clients happy while simultaneously governing for the whole nation. Franklin Roosevelt was the master of this balancing act, and to varying degrees, FDR ’s early successors—Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson—were more or less able to juggle the party’s clients with the public interest in a similar fashion.
However, the tumult of the 1960s interrupted the party’s ability to tend to the clients and the public interest. The major problem was the addition of new clients, all of whom had their own power bases within the party and their own unique set of demands. African Americans entered the electorate as Democrats in the 1960s, demanding increased social welfare spending. Feminist groups demanded regulations to secure equal treatment in the workplace, more generous welfare benefits for poor women, and greater access to abortions. The environmental and consumer rights movements wanted new layers of government regulations to protect the quality of life. Finally, the rise of public sector labor unions consistently pushed the Democrats to expand the scope of government at all levels and inhibited its ability to reform the federal bureaucracy.
Add these groups to industrial and craft unions, which had belonged to the party more or less since the 1930s, and the Democrats suddenly had too many clients with too many demands. No longer, it seemed, could Democratic leaders tend to their interests while focusing on public concerns.
The Obama Administration has seen the consequences of this logic play itself out fully. Unlike Carter and Clinton before him, who at least tried to tame the party clients, President Obama has time and again acceded to their demands, at the expense of the public good. The stimulus bill, designed by congressional Democrats with Obama’s blessing, pumped $800 billion into the economy, largely through Democratic clients like labor, environmental groups, and African Americans. Obama followed that up with a bailout of the auto industry that gave the United Auto Workers much more than they would have won in bankruptcy court, then proceeded as if the economic crisis had passed. His financial reform legislation was highly preferential to his big-money donors on Wall Street; his cap-and-trade bill tried to award environmentalists, well-heeled businesses, and the poor in one fell swoop; and his health care bill is the apogee of anti-republican, liberal clientelism, a sprawling, trillion-dollar payoff to an array of groups that leaves the average American in no better shape.
The 2010 midterms saw the worst drubbing for the Democratic party since 1938 as the GOP won control of the House of Representatives—due punishment for Obama’s focus on the party clients at the expense of the national interest
***
In his veto of the Bank of the United States, Democratic party founder Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” as he was known, declared, “There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.”
It is ironic that Jackson’s heirs would come to stand for exactly what he opposed. But above all it is tragic. It is tragic because the United States needs a healthy, two-party system, and more to the point it needs the Democratic party. There is a reason, after all, that the party survived the disastrous presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, both of which contributed mightily to the onset of the Civil War; survived Grover Cleveland’s handling of the Panic of 1893; survived the rebuke suffered by the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1920; survived the “credibility gap” of the LBJ administration; and survived the incompetence of the Carter administration. It is in part because the party’s core message—as articulated by Jackson nearly two centuries ago—still resonates to this day. America is a radically egalitarian country, at least in its outlook; the people are inherently skeptical about special privileges and always ready to listen to a political party that promises an equal playing field.
Today’s Democratic leaders talk a lot about equality, but their actions speak louder than their words. The party has come to play a double game—complaining loudly about inequality in society while enacting policies to advance the interests of its own clients. This has created a void in the body politic—one that the Republican party, which has long been the party of economic expansion rather than the ideal of social equality, is simply not able to fill.
With the exception of the Tea Party, there is no real faction out there making the case for an end to special privilege.
What would Old Hickory have to say about that?
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/25/how_big_government_patronage_ruined_the_democratic_party_114238-full.html at May 28, 2012 - 06:07:11 AM PDT
The story told here is not a tale of right and wrong. There are no good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, in this account. American politics is regularly cast in such moralistic terms, but that has not been our approach here. Instead, our focus has been on the factions within American society, and how the Democratic party has transformed the interests of those factions into public policy.
That is the great challenge of a republican system of government such as ours—one in which the people are sovereign and the government operates on their behalf. Such governments are easy to envision in theory but hard to realize in practice. People are fundamentally self-interested, always ready to put themselves over the community, so it is very difficult to devise a government run by people that puts the whole community first.
Our two great political parties—the Democrats and the Republicans—regularly offer public-spirited platforms that are in keeping with those principles, at least on the surface. Even a casual observer of the political scene could not fail to note that both sides couch their arguments in communitarian language: what is good for our national defense, our prosperity, our shared sense of justice, and so on. In other words, both sides publicly argue that everybody would benefit from their particular programs.
Unfortunately, the public faces of both parties often mask some decidedly anti-republican tendencies. Governed only by the ambitions of politicians and a slender set of rules, parties are not constrained to act only on behalf of all the people, and they regularly do not. While the rhetoric of both sides may speak to the public good, behind the scenes Democrats and Republicans are often eager to make deals with various factions within society—if that is what it takes to win.
We have called this practice clientelism—the exchange of votes for governmental favors between a faction and a party. The great oversight of our Constitution was the framers’ failure to anticipate the inevitability of political parties, and thus to provide for better mechanisms to control their behavior. For if a political party is behaving in an anti-republican manner, and it controls the government, then the government—even with all of its checks and balances—will likewise behave in an anti-republican manner.
Opposition to clientelism brought the Democratic party into existence in the 1820s. Andrew Jackson and his allies formed it as a vehicle for their vengeance against the “corrupt bargain” of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, and more generally to fight the public venality of the “Era of Good Feelings,” wherein politicians in Washington and moneymen in New York and Philadelphia seemed to conspire for their own benefit rather than doing the work of the people.
As an alternative, Jackson and his Democrats would stand up for the “humble members of society”—the small farmers, the laborers, and the urban ethnics who did not have connections to get a special deal from the government. While the party lost this identity to the sectional grievances of the late nineteenth century, William Jennings Bryan reignited the old Jacksonian flame at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Later, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt implemented a new philosophy to secure equal treatment for the downtrodden—an active, “progressive” federal government that would reshape society to make it more just. To this day, this remains the public-spirited message of the Democratic party: that the whole country will be better off if all its people are treated equally.
Yet the Democrats wasted little time before committing the very errors they had pledged to rectify. Andrew Jackson’s principle of “rotation in office” evolved from a leveling, democratic institution into the crooked “spoils system” of rewarding political cronies. In time, the spoils system became the foundation for morally bankrupt political machines like Tammany Hall, whose only purpose in winning office was to pay off the supporters who had put it there. The nineteenth-century patronage regime was modernized in the twentieth century by the liberal Democrats who expanded the size and scope of the government with the New Deal. The Democratic party would no longer use mere patronage to reward a few thousand loyalists; now it would take advantage of the massive new regulatory and redistributive powers of Washington to reward millions of new party clients—not only with federal jobs but with beneficial laws that reshaped society to advance their particular interests. The party could take care of whole classes in society—farmers, union workers, urban ethnics—with a single stroke of the presidential pen.
Of course, most voters are not clients of the Democratic party, or of the Republican party for that matter. Most voters expect no special favors after Election Day, and the parties compete for their support only by offering broad-based programs ostensibly designed to benefit all (or, at least, most) Americans. It’s always been this way—even at the height of the New Deal majority, the Democrats could never claim half-plus-one of the public as their clients.
Thus, the political challenge facing modern Democratic leaders is to keep the party clients happy while simultaneously governing for the whole nation. Franklin Roosevelt was the master of this balancing act, and to varying degrees, FDR ’s early successors—Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson—were more or less able to juggle the party’s clients with the public interest in a similar fashion.
However, the tumult of the 1960s interrupted the party’s ability to tend to the clients and the public interest. The major problem was the addition of new clients, all of whom had their own power bases within the party and their own unique set of demands. African Americans entered the electorate as Democrats in the 1960s, demanding increased social welfare spending. Feminist groups demanded regulations to secure equal treatment in the workplace, more generous welfare benefits for poor women, and greater access to abortions. The environmental and consumer rights movements wanted new layers of government regulations to protect the quality of life. Finally, the rise of public sector labor unions consistently pushed the Democrats to expand the scope of government at all levels and inhibited its ability to reform the federal bureaucracy.
Add these groups to industrial and craft unions, which had belonged to the party more or less since the 1930s, and the Democrats suddenly had too many clients with too many demands. No longer, it seemed, could Democratic leaders tend to their interests while focusing on public concerns.
The Obama Administration has seen the consequences of this logic play itself out fully. Unlike Carter and Clinton before him, who at least tried to tame the party clients, President Obama has time and again acceded to their demands, at the expense of the public good. The stimulus bill, designed by congressional Democrats with Obama’s blessing, pumped $800 billion into the economy, largely through Democratic clients like labor, environmental groups, and African Americans. Obama followed that up with a bailout of the auto industry that gave the United Auto Workers much more than they would have won in bankruptcy court, then proceeded as if the economic crisis had passed. His financial reform legislation was highly preferential to his big-money donors on Wall Street; his cap-and-trade bill tried to award environmentalists, well-heeled businesses, and the poor in one fell swoop; and his health care bill is the apogee of anti-republican, liberal clientelism, a sprawling, trillion-dollar payoff to an array of groups that leaves the average American in no better shape.
The 2010 midterms saw the worst drubbing for the Democratic party since 1938 as the GOP won control of the House of Representatives—due punishment for Obama’s focus on the party clients at the expense of the national interest
***
In his veto of the Bank of the United States, Democratic party founder Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” as he was known, declared, “There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.”
It is ironic that Jackson’s heirs would come to stand for exactly what he opposed. But above all it is tragic. It is tragic because the United States needs a healthy, two-party system, and more to the point it needs the Democratic party. There is a reason, after all, that the party survived the disastrous presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, both of which contributed mightily to the onset of the Civil War; survived Grover Cleveland’s handling of the Panic of 1893; survived the rebuke suffered by the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1920; survived the “credibility gap” of the LBJ administration; and survived the incompetence of the Carter administration. It is in part because the party’s core message—as articulated by Jackson nearly two centuries ago—still resonates to this day. America is a radically egalitarian country, at least in its outlook; the people are inherently skeptical about special privileges and always ready to listen to a political party that promises an equal playing field.
Today’s Democratic leaders talk a lot about equality, but their actions speak louder than their words. The party has come to play a double game—complaining loudly about inequality in society while enacting policies to advance the interests of its own clients. This has created a void in the body politic—one that the Republican party, which has long been the party of economic expansion rather than the ideal of social equality, is simply not able to fill.
With the exception of the Tea Party, there is no real faction out there making the case for an end to special privilege.
What would Old Hickory have to say about that?
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/25/how_big_government_patronage_ruined_the_democratic_party_114238-full.html at May 28, 2012 - 06:07:11 AM PDT
Obama's Truth Team Being Brainwashed
COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama's campaign staff is attempting to invigorate the Truth Team by giving "proof" the president' s reported spending spree never happened, according to ABC News. The president's Truth Team is being directed to a Market Watch report that attempts to refute the facts about the spending spree and the team is asked to report any political attacks they hear. As a political consultant, the idea of the Truth Team does not sit well with me.
President Obama has come under fire for having a record spending spree. The Market Watch report is being supported by the president's campaign staff even though, as ABC Reports, the report has come under fire for being "severely flawed." The bigger picture at play is the pushing of the idea the president has not done anything wrong during his presidency, and that is extremely alarming.
The stated goal
of President Obama's Truth Team is that it is a grass-roots attempt to counter any incorrect negative adds about the president. By requesting people report any attacks on the president is the first clue as to what is going on. The second clue is the use of the Market Watch report, while the third clue is the use of the Attack Watch website that battles every major attack against the president with spun or one-sided reporting. The Truth Team is actually being fashioned into nothing more than a propaganda team to be brainwashed into believing that the president can do no wrong.
The ideal any political record is perfect is dangerously flawed as nobody can make the correct decision every time. If the president's campaign staff is allowed to press this ideal of the omnipotence of the president with the Truth Team unabated, President Obama will have a base of brainwashed supporters who will never understand that there is another side to every political coin.
This disservice to the American political system could be one of the greatest mistakes of his term and could nurture a generation of voters who are less bipartisan as ever before. This is a move toward the separation of the country by the president who promised bipartisanship during his time in office.
SOURCE: YAHOO!
President Obama has come under fire for having a record spending spree. The Market Watch report is being supported by the president's campaign staff even though, as ABC Reports, the report has come under fire for being "severely flawed." The bigger picture at play is the pushing of the idea the president has not done anything wrong during his presidency, and that is extremely alarming.
The stated goal
of President Obama's Truth Team is that it is a grass-roots attempt to counter any incorrect negative adds about the president. By requesting people report any attacks on the president is the first clue as to what is going on. The second clue is the use of the Market Watch report, while the third clue is the use of the Attack Watch website that battles every major attack against the president with spun or one-sided reporting. The Truth Team is actually being fashioned into nothing more than a propaganda team to be brainwashed into believing that the president can do no wrong.
The ideal any political record is perfect is dangerously flawed as nobody can make the correct decision every time. If the president's campaign staff is allowed to press this ideal of the omnipotence of the president with the Truth Team unabated, President Obama will have a base of brainwashed supporters who will never understand that there is another side to every political coin.
This disservice to the American political system could be one of the greatest mistakes of his term and could nurture a generation of voters who are less bipartisan as ever before. This is a move toward the separation of the country by the president who promised bipartisanship during his time in office.
SOURCE: YAHOO!
Voting With Their Wallets
THE French aided the Americans in their revolution against their British oppressors. Now Benoît Pous-Bertran de Balanda, the descendant of a French general who fought for the Americans, is trying to help his wealthy countrymen escape what he calls the tyranny of a new Socialist government primed to severely tax the rich.
And France’s loss could be New York’s gain.
Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda, 30, is a broker for wealthy French clients looking to buy apartments in Manhattan. With the election of the Socialist François Hollande as president this month, the wealthy in France are suddenly scrambling for places to stash their money for a while.
Well-heeled French citizens are scouring real estate opportunities in neighboring countries like Britain and Switzerland. The United States — particularly New York and Miami — is also drawing French investors looking to pick up rental properties or pieds-Ã -terre, brokers say.
In recent months, as Mr. Hollande’s victory appeared more possible, the French stepped up their house-hunting visits to New York, several brokers said.
These are not billionaire Russian oligarchs with blank-check budgets on the hunt for trophy properties. The French buyers most active in recent months are generally looking at properties between $500,000 and $5 million, brokers say.
What the French are so concerned about is Mr. Hollande’s campaign vow to tax income over 1 million euros at a 75 percent rate. The Socialist government, trying to put a dent in France’s $1.3 trillion euro debt, has said it will also raise the tax rate on capital gains to the same level as the tax on ordinary income.
“So there would not be any kind of advantage to invest in something in France, in the stock market or real estate,” said Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda, who runs Black Tulip Capital, a New York-based real estate asset management company he started last August that helps clients find properties and manages them.
To Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda and other wealthy French people, the news feels like a rerun of 1981, when President François Mitterrand decided to nationalize several big companies and raised taxes (though both moves were later reversed). And after the tax policy flip-flops by President Nicolas Sarkozy over the past five years — he gave the wealthy tax breaks only to raise taxes two years later — many in France see their own market is too volatile, and are searching for a safe haven.
The flagging euro and the economic struggles in Greece, Italy and Spain have only further shaken their confidence in investing at home. Last month, a Parisian couple in their 50s decided to buy a $4 million waterfront house in Miami after first considering Cannes, said Christophe Bourreau, a French broker with Barnes International who is now based in New York.
“They feel like the new president is hunting the wealthy,” Mr. Bourreau said, “and that the sooner their money is out of France the better.” The window may close soon: Mr. Hollande has said he will look to put his tax plans in place this summer, after parliamentary elections next month.
Many in the new wave of French buyers who have descended on Manhattan are focused on finding something downtown and have been frustrated by the lack of inventory, said Edward Johnston, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens. Others are looking near Central Park and Columbus Circle, with buildings like the Sheffield, at 322 West 57th Street, and the Setai Fifth Avenue drawing multiple visits, brokers said.
Deborah Gimelson, another broker at Brown Harris Stevens, said that in the last two weeks she had shown three different French bankers a duplex town house in the East Village that she is co-listing for $2.95 million. One made an offer on the home but was outbid, she said.
She said she suspected that the property itself — with an enclosed porch that looks out on a garden that “feels like parts of Paris,” she said — had something to do with the visits. But they were the first French buyers she had seen in 10 years.
“Whether they are French, Italian or Greek,” she said, “people from Europe want to put their money here. We are seeing a lot more people come out of those countries than in a long time.”
Mr. Johnston says the city is seeing a “massive influx of people” from France. He has taken five groups on visits since the beginning of the year. “They are serious buyers,” he said, although “they are not quick to act.”
Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda said he had about 20 French clients looking for condo apartments to buy in New York. He has been suggesting that they consider the Trump SoHo, the hotel-condo property. It offers “fractional occupancy” to owners, who can use the apartment for up to 120 days a year and have it rented out as a hotel suite the rest of the year.
The French invasion is poised to give Trump SoHo a needed boost. The 46-story project has been a source of tension in SoHo. Some residents have grumbled that it is an out-of-place abomination, towering over the surrounding low-rise structures. Amy Williamson, the development’s vice president for sales, said Donald J. Trump had taken advantage of a zoning loophole that had not anticipated the “hybrid” between a commercial and a residential building, enabling it to be built to 46 stories.
Trump SoHo has done well as a hotel, Ms. Williamson said. But it has struggled as a condominium development. About a quarter of the 391 residences have been sold or are under contract since 2007, she said. Prices range from studios starting at $995,000 to penthouse suites starting at $2,966,250.
No French buyers have signed on the dotted line, but Ms. Williamson is confident that several purchases are imminent, particularly in view of the French election. “The people that were originally looking have now reaccelerated their interest,” she said.
Ms. Williamson is planning to travel with Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda in late June on a Trump SoHo road show to Geneva, Luxembourg and Paris.
He has been living in New York for only two years, yet Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda has deeper ties to North America than most Americans.
His ancestor François Bertran de Palmarolle served as a French general in the American Revolution. The general’s father, François-Charles Bertran de Palmarolle, died on the battlefield in Canada during the Seven Years’ War. The town of Palmarolle in Quebec was named after the Frenchman, who is buried there.
Of course, preserving the French noble family meant pulling out when the going got tough. When the revolution against Louis XVI started, Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda’s family emigrated to Spain for five years. Most of them returned when the nobility was reorganized under Napoleon, he said.
Some stayed behind in Spain for good. Now Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda, who met his French wife in New York, is considering becoming an American citizen and staying for the foreseeable future. In his circle, at least, he is not alone.
“I have met a lot of French expatriates who are considering the option to stay in the U.S. for at least five years,” he said. “They just want to wait, to wait and see what happens in France with taxes.”
Source: New York Times
And France’s loss could be New York’s gain.
Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda, 30, is a broker for wealthy French clients looking to buy apartments in Manhattan. With the election of the Socialist François Hollande as president this month, the wealthy in France are suddenly scrambling for places to stash their money for a while.
Well-heeled French citizens are scouring real estate opportunities in neighboring countries like Britain and Switzerland. The United States — particularly New York and Miami — is also drawing French investors looking to pick up rental properties or pieds-Ã -terre, brokers say.
In recent months, as Mr. Hollande’s victory appeared more possible, the French stepped up their house-hunting visits to New York, several brokers said.
These are not billionaire Russian oligarchs with blank-check budgets on the hunt for trophy properties. The French buyers most active in recent months are generally looking at properties between $500,000 and $5 million, brokers say.
What the French are so concerned about is Mr. Hollande’s campaign vow to tax income over 1 million euros at a 75 percent rate. The Socialist government, trying to put a dent in France’s $1.3 trillion euro debt, has said it will also raise the tax rate on capital gains to the same level as the tax on ordinary income.
“So there would not be any kind of advantage to invest in something in France, in the stock market or real estate,” said Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda, who runs Black Tulip Capital, a New York-based real estate asset management company he started last August that helps clients find properties and manages them.
To Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda and other wealthy French people, the news feels like a rerun of 1981, when President François Mitterrand decided to nationalize several big companies and raised taxes (though both moves were later reversed). And after the tax policy flip-flops by President Nicolas Sarkozy over the past five years — he gave the wealthy tax breaks only to raise taxes two years later — many in France see their own market is too volatile, and are searching for a safe haven.
The flagging euro and the economic struggles in Greece, Italy and Spain have only further shaken their confidence in investing at home. Last month, a Parisian couple in their 50s decided to buy a $4 million waterfront house in Miami after first considering Cannes, said Christophe Bourreau, a French broker with Barnes International who is now based in New York.
“They feel like the new president is hunting the wealthy,” Mr. Bourreau said, “and that the sooner their money is out of France the better.” The window may close soon: Mr. Hollande has said he will look to put his tax plans in place this summer, after parliamentary elections next month.
Many in the new wave of French buyers who have descended on Manhattan are focused on finding something downtown and have been frustrated by the lack of inventory, said Edward Johnston, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens. Others are looking near Central Park and Columbus Circle, with buildings like the Sheffield, at 322 West 57th Street, and the Setai Fifth Avenue drawing multiple visits, brokers said.
Deborah Gimelson, another broker at Brown Harris Stevens, said that in the last two weeks she had shown three different French bankers a duplex town house in the East Village that she is co-listing for $2.95 million. One made an offer on the home but was outbid, she said.
She said she suspected that the property itself — with an enclosed porch that looks out on a garden that “feels like parts of Paris,” she said — had something to do with the visits. But they were the first French buyers she had seen in 10 years.
“Whether they are French, Italian or Greek,” she said, “people from Europe want to put their money here. We are seeing a lot more people come out of those countries than in a long time.”
Mr. Johnston says the city is seeing a “massive influx of people” from France. He has taken five groups on visits since the beginning of the year. “They are serious buyers,” he said, although “they are not quick to act.”
Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda said he had about 20 French clients looking for condo apartments to buy in New York. He has been suggesting that they consider the Trump SoHo, the hotel-condo property. It offers “fractional occupancy” to owners, who can use the apartment for up to 120 days a year and have it rented out as a hotel suite the rest of the year.
The French invasion is poised to give Trump SoHo a needed boost. The 46-story project has been a source of tension in SoHo. Some residents have grumbled that it is an out-of-place abomination, towering over the surrounding low-rise structures. Amy Williamson, the development’s vice president for sales, said Donald J. Trump had taken advantage of a zoning loophole that had not anticipated the “hybrid” between a commercial and a residential building, enabling it to be built to 46 stories.
Trump SoHo has done well as a hotel, Ms. Williamson said. But it has struggled as a condominium development. About a quarter of the 391 residences have been sold or are under contract since 2007, she said. Prices range from studios starting at $995,000 to penthouse suites starting at $2,966,250.
No French buyers have signed on the dotted line, but Ms. Williamson is confident that several purchases are imminent, particularly in view of the French election. “The people that were originally looking have now reaccelerated their interest,” she said.
Ms. Williamson is planning to travel with Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda in late June on a Trump SoHo road show to Geneva, Luxembourg and Paris.
He has been living in New York for only two years, yet Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda has deeper ties to North America than most Americans.
His ancestor François Bertran de Palmarolle served as a French general in the American Revolution. The general’s father, François-Charles Bertran de Palmarolle, died on the battlefield in Canada during the Seven Years’ War. The town of Palmarolle in Quebec was named after the Frenchman, who is buried there.
Of course, preserving the French noble family meant pulling out when the going got tough. When the revolution against Louis XVI started, Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda’s family emigrated to Spain for five years. Most of them returned when the nobility was reorganized under Napoleon, he said.
Some stayed behind in Spain for good. Now Mr. Pous-Bertran de Balanda, who met his French wife in New York, is considering becoming an American citizen and staying for the foreseeable future. In his circle, at least, he is not alone.
“I have met a lot of French expatriates who are considering the option to stay in the U.S. for at least five years,” he said. “They just want to wait, to wait and see what happens in France with taxes.”
Source: New York Times
NYT White House Correspondent: Obama 'Hates' Camp David Because There's No Golf
Camp David has been an historic presidential retreat since World War II, but according to New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper, Barack Obama "hates it" because there isn't any golf.
Such was revealed on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend (video follows with transcript and commentary):
HELENE COOPER, NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Alright, for something totally superficial, I have figured out why President Obama does not like Camp David.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: He doesn’t like it?
COOPER: He hates it. We were up there for the G-8 last weekend and I’ve never been able to understand why, you know, Obama, President Obama doesn't like going there. It's beautiful. I mean, the cabins are…
MATTHEWS: Did you get to see it?
COOPER: Yes, I finally got to see it. I got to see the presidential cabin.
MATTHEWS: Everybody loved it.
COOPER: It was fantastic. And so everybody’s going, “Why doesn't he spend more time up there?” No golf.
MATTHEWS: No golf.
COOPER: It's all about the golf.
MATTHEWS: Doesn’t he have a little putting green?
COOPER: No, it's all about the golf. It's got a couple of places where you can...
MATTHEWS: But it's got skeet shooting, it’s got bowling, it’s got everything.
COOPER: There's wildlife, I saw a squirrel.
MATTHEWS: Oh God. I think that shows a limitation at this point. I think it would be great out there.
You think so, Chris?
After all, the President that claims to be a man of the people has now played over 100 rounds of golf since Inauguration Day.
While Obama's adoring media try to paint Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a wealthy elitest out of touch with the public, maybe they should be far more critical of a president that has averaged over two rounds of golf per month while much of the nation struggles to make ends meet.
His love of golf is so great he doesn't even like the famed presidential retreat because it doesn't have a course.
It therefore will be very interesting to see how much attention Cooper's startling revelation gets in the coming days.
Stay tuned.
SOURCE: Newsbusters.org
Such was revealed on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend (video follows with transcript and commentary):
HELENE COOPER, NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Alright, for something totally superficial, I have figured out why President Obama does not like Camp David.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: He doesn’t like it?
COOPER: He hates it. We were up there for the G-8 last weekend and I’ve never been able to understand why, you know, Obama, President Obama doesn't like going there. It's beautiful. I mean, the cabins are…
MATTHEWS: Did you get to see it?
MATTHEWS: Everybody loved it.
COOPER: It was fantastic. And so everybody’s going, “Why doesn't he spend more time up there?” No golf.
MATTHEWS: No golf.
COOPER: It's all about the golf.
MATTHEWS: Doesn’t he have a little putting green?
COOPER: No, it's all about the golf. It's got a couple of places where you can...
MATTHEWS: But it's got skeet shooting, it’s got bowling, it’s got everything.
COOPER: There's wildlife, I saw a squirrel.
MATTHEWS: Oh God. I think that shows a limitation at this point. I think it would be great out there.
You think so, Chris?
After all, the President that claims to be a man of the people has now played over 100 rounds of golf since Inauguration Day.
While Obama's adoring media try to paint Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a wealthy elitest out of touch with the public, maybe they should be far more critical of a president that has averaged over two rounds of golf per month while much of the nation struggles to make ends meet.
His love of golf is so great he doesn't even like the famed presidential retreat because it doesn't have a course.
It therefore will be very interesting to see how much attention Cooper's startling revelation gets in the coming days.
Stay tuned.
SOURCE: Newsbusters.org
Sterling Hall bomber Armstrong arrested after $800,000 cash found in vehicle
That arrest Thursday led to a search on Saturday by the state Division of Criminal Investigation of a town of Madison trailer home where Armstrong lives for evidence of marijuana trafficking, according to a search warrant filed in Dane County Circuit Court.
Neither Wisconsin nor Illinois authorities found marijuana in Armstrong's trailer or motor home.
A spokeswoman from the Illinois State Police office in Chicago did not return phone or email messages asking about Armstrong's current status.
Wisconsin Department of Justice spokeswomen Dana Brueck said DCI was asked to help another police agency and cannot comment on an open investigation.
During the search of Armstrong's trailer on Honeysuckle Lane in the town of Madison, investigators seized computers and data storage drives along with a digital camera, cellphone and various documents.
Armstrong, 65, was one of three men arrested for their roles in the Aug. 24, 1970, bombing that targeted the Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus as a protest of Vietnam War. A fourth man wanted in the case, Leo Burt, has never been found. Researcher Robert Fassnacht was killed in the blast. Armstrong was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but his term was later reduced, and he was released in January 1980 after serving seven years.
According to the warrant:
Armstrong's motor home was stopped around 5:50 p.m. Thursday on Interstate 90 at the Fullerton Interchange. Trooper Jose Alvarez noticed that Armstrong seemed nervous and that his hand was shaking as he handed over his driver's license.
After writing Armstrong a warning for a traffic violation, he asked whether Armstrong had any drugs, guns or large amounts of cash, and Armstrong answered no. Alvarez asked if he could search the motor home, and Armstrong said no.
Armstrong agreed to wait for a police dog to be sent to the scene, but while waiting for the dog Armstrong approached Alvarez and said he had changed his mind and agreed to the search.
Inspecting a bed in the motor home, Alvarez noticed a plywood plank with scratched and tool-marked screws and removed the screws and plank. He found two duffel bags, a brown paper bag and a black cooler pouch. Each contained heat-sealed bags of cash, which was later found to total about $815,000. Investigators who processed the money said it smelled strongly of cannabis.
Armstrong was arrested but denied knowing anything about the money, only that he had $4,000 in traveling money and was returning home to Madison.
SOURCE: Madison.com
Extra Credit: Anti-teacher flier stirs tempest in Janesville
Janesville teachers and their supporters expressed outrage this week after an anonymous group distributed fliers listing their salaries and urging parents to request their child be assigned to a "non-radical teacher" next year.
The fliers, which included the names, titles and salaries of the 321 highest-paid Janesville teachers, also urged readers to go to iverifytherecall.com to determine if the teachers signed the petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker.
Orville Seymer, an open records specialist with the conservative Milwaukee-based activist organization Citizens for Responsible Government, said the group responsible for the flier has asked to remain anonymous "for obvious reasons."
On behalf of the anonymous group, Citizens for Responsible Government filed an open records request with the Janesville School District seeking teacher names, salaries and titles. Seymer provided the information to the anonymous group, but was not involved in drafting or distributing the fliers, he said. No other requests of a similar nature have been filed with other districts, Seymer added.
The flier angered teachers, who were already targeted by a flier earlier this year accusing them of having a "Marxist, globalist agenda," said Ted Lewis, regional union representative for Rock County teachers.
"It's trying to intimidate them and make them feel guilty for earning salaries," Lewis said. "They're creating this witch hunt for people who engaged in their civic duty."
Lewis said it was "ironic" that whoever distributed the fliers "very publicly posts the names of individuals and their salaries and yet he or she won't even divulge their identity."
Chris Kliesmet, executive administrator of Citizens for Responsible Government, said his organization isn't responsible for the content of the flier, but said it has raised the question about what's being taught in public schools.
"The question in the back of a lot of people's minds is, 'Are my children being indoctrinated?'" he said.
Lewis said feedback he's heard from the public indicates that people find the vilification of teachers "outrageous" and appreciate what public school teachers do.
"Everybody I've spoken to say teachers don't deserve this," Lewis said. "This is an attack against teachers, against public education."
The Janesville Gazette reported Tuesday that the flier was not distributed in newspapers, but instead was placed in newspaper boxes at private residences without the paper's permission. Janesville Police Deputy Chief Dan Davis said Tuesday distributing fliers in newspaper boxes is not against the law.
SOURCE: Madison.com
The fliers, which included the names, titles and salaries of the 321 highest-paid Janesville teachers, also urged readers to go to iverifytherecall.com to determine if the teachers signed the petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker.
Orville Seymer, an open records specialist with the conservative Milwaukee-based activist organization Citizens for Responsible Government, said the group responsible for the flier has asked to remain anonymous "for obvious reasons."
On behalf of the anonymous group, Citizens for Responsible Government filed an open records request with the Janesville School District seeking teacher names, salaries and titles. Seymer provided the information to the anonymous group, but was not involved in drafting or distributing the fliers, he said. No other requests of a similar nature have been filed with other districts, Seymer added.
The flier angered teachers, who were already targeted by a flier earlier this year accusing them of having a "Marxist, globalist agenda," said Ted Lewis, regional union representative for Rock County teachers.
"It's trying to intimidate them and make them feel guilty for earning salaries," Lewis said. "They're creating this witch hunt for people who engaged in their civic duty."
Lewis said it was "ironic" that whoever distributed the fliers "very publicly posts the names of individuals and their salaries and yet he or she won't even divulge their identity."
Chris Kliesmet, executive administrator of Citizens for Responsible Government, said his organization isn't responsible for the content of the flier, but said it has raised the question about what's being taught in public schools.
"The question in the back of a lot of people's minds is, 'Are my children being indoctrinated?'" he said.
Lewis said feedback he's heard from the public indicates that people find the vilification of teachers "outrageous" and appreciate what public school teachers do.
"Everybody I've spoken to say teachers don't deserve this," Lewis said. "This is an attack against teachers, against public education."
The Janesville Gazette reported Tuesday that the flier was not distributed in newspapers, but instead was placed in newspaper boxes at private residences without the paper's permission. Janesville Police Deputy Chief Dan Davis said Tuesday distributing fliers in newspaper boxes is not against the law.
SOURCE: Madison.com
Umarov Calls on All Russia’s Muslims to Join Jihad
May 2012 was probably thought of as an exceptional month as the North Caucasian jihadists planned an event that would illuminate the unity of the Muslims in the North Caucasus. On May 13, 2012, a seminar took place in Istanbul that changed its title several times over the past several weeks. Information about plans to hold an international conference at the University of the Fatih district in Istanbul first appeared on the Internet. The Fatih district is known to be the home to various Muslim organizations and committees that help the North Caucasians in their struggle against Russia. The event was dubbed the “Conference of Caucasian Diasporas,” but on its first day, the event was renamed the “Caucasian Congress” (http://nohchipress.info/?p=6319). Turkish organization Imkander, which positions itself as a humanitarian and human rights-oriented institution, assisted in the preparations for the conference (www.imkander.org.tr/).
In fact, the title “Conference of Caucasus Diasporas” would have been the most appropriate option since the event’s participants were made up of Caucasus Emirate supporters. There were far fewer than the stated “450 delegates” present at the conference; counting women and children who came to the conference, as the jihadi websites did, was misleading. Yet, the importance of this event did not depend on how many people attended. Even if there had been only a couple dozen participants, it would still have been noteworthy since it was the first conference of its kind to be organized by the Caucasus Emirate and held abroad. The conference was designed to show the unified support of the Caucasus diasporas for the Caucasus Emirate and recognize its leader, Doku Umarov, as the only legitimate authority in the North Caucasus. All of the speakers at the conference expressed support for the Caucasus Emirate and its leader.
The conference also had some embarrassing moments. Those participants who had been taken in by the initial title of the conference and who came to report on human rights violations in Russia were subsequently forced to distance themselves from the event. For example, a human rights activist from Finland, Elena Maglevannaya, did just that, refusing to support the Caucasus Emirate in writing. Maglevannaya converted to Islam and has been actively engaged in assisting Chechens who are in Russian prisons (http://kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2012/05/19/90668.shtml). The presence of Alexander Kvakhadze, the representative of the Circassian Cultural Center in Georgia, at the conference was also out of place, although his report was on the tragedy of the Circassians.
The Russian Foreign Ministry reacted indignantly to the “Caucasian Congress” in Istanbul, saying in an official statement that it was unacceptable for conferences that “threaten the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” to be held in Turkey (www.rosbalt.ru/main/2012/05/18/982487.html). Moscow’s angry reaction indicated that the conference organizers had achieved their goal. The conference stressed that Doku Umarov’s authority in the North Caucasus was the only legitimate force in the region. Moreover, the conference took place despite the official designation of the Caucasus Emirate as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations (http://rusmission.org/17/1/2056). Consequently the event’s organizers practically challenged the international community, disagreeing with its judgment. The conference organizers were also indignant about being ignored by the Russian and pro-democracy Chechen media. Representatives of the Caucasus Emirate who were behind the conference accused the pro-democracy Chechen leaders of showing criminal disregard for their event.
Meanwhile, the North Caucasus jihadist leader followed up on the initiative of his supporters in Istanbul by addressing the Chechen people to explain his position and to ask for a favor. Umarov stated that the militants fought for the Chechen people and asked that Chechens stop making divisive statements, adding that if Chechens were not actively assisting the insurgency it would be helpful if they at least abstained from obstructing the insurgents. The tone of Umarov’s video recording and certain points he made indicated that his address was directed against Russian policies in the North Caucasus in general and Chechnya in particular. In his eight minute address, the insurgent leader emphasized unity with the people – something that had not been heard from him since 2007 (www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rwHYtD4O6is).
Also, in a separate six-minute video, Umarov called on Russian citizens, in particular the Muslim population of the Russian Federation, to support jihad against the government (http://kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2012/05/22/90743.shtml). Umarov gave the example of a young man who accompanied him in fighting for 18 years, becoming like a son. Now, the young man has his own son who will join the jihad. Umarov warned Vladimir Putin and his entourage that they would not be able to stop the war and deprive the militants of the desire for independence from Russia as new generations of Chechen youth join the resistance. For the first time, the Caucasus Emirate leader mentioned the “independence” of Chechnya among his goals along with an all-out jihad. Since 2007, the year that the Caucasus Emirate was first established, the word independence has been all but absent from Umarov’s vocabulary.
Both video recordings to the Chechens and Muslims of Russia were made against the backdrop of a mass gathering of people. The recordings were probably made at the meeting of commanders of the Western Chechnya sector that took place at a militant base on April 29. Umarov was flanked by his naib (deputy) Emir Khamzat on the left and by Emir Zaurbek on the right. Emir Zaurbek came from the group under Hussein Gakaev’s command in eastern Chechnya.
The jihadists appear determined to launch an ideologically-charged campaign. For a long time, the North Caucasus jihadi ideology was dominated by the constructs of separatist ideologue Movladi Udugov who operates the Kavkazcenter website. Udugov scored a propaganda victory during the first Chechen war in 1994-1996. It is likely that more events, which strive to demonstrate greater international support for the ideas of the Caucasus Emirate, will follow.
However, there is a significant barrier: the Caucasus Emirate’s members adhere to the principle that “he who is not on our side is our enemy,” which will not find much acceptance among an Internet audience. Therefore, supporters of the Caucasus Emirate will need to stop indulging in placing labels on everybody else and instead look for common interests, such as focusing on the primary goal of making the North Caucasus independent of the Russian Federation.
SOURCE: Jamestown Foundation
20-Foot Black Rat Snake Found In Columbia Backyard
Columbia, SC --
A surprise in a Columbia backyard and it’s not exactly what you want to see.
A large black rat snake was found behind one resident’s home. This was no normal sized snake, though…the creature is about 20 feet long!
Officials with the South Caroliona Department of Natural Resources and Riverbanks Zoo came to see and remove the snake.
SOURCE: WJBF-TV
The Whole Truth
Published on Mar 14, 2012 by AmericanDocs4Truth
A response to the Democrat ad showing Paul Ryan throwing grandma off a cliff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGnE83A1Z4U Get the whole truth on how Obamacare will impact the health and welfare of your loved ones at www.AmericanDoctors4Truth.org.
A response to the Democrat ad showing Paul Ryan throwing grandma off a cliff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGnE83A1Z4U Get the whole truth on how Obamacare will impact the health and welfare of your loved ones at www.AmericanDoctors4Truth.org.
When 'Minority' is a Trick of Definition
When the Census Bureau this month issued a press release headlined "Most Children Younger Than Age 1 are Minorities," the media snapped to attention. News outlets nationwide covered the announcement, hailing it as a "historic demographic milestone" (CNN), as the "dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority" (Washington Post), and as an "important turning point for the nation" (McClatchy) that would "starkly … change the face of America's next generations" (Time).
None of that was true.
None of that was new, either. The Census Bureau keeps dangling commonplace demographic data as if they were a dramatic racial revelation, and the press keeps taking the bait. The stories this month about minority births becoming the majority could have been recycled from a year ago, when the same thing was being reported -- and with the same air of history in the making. "For the first time," an AP story declared in June 2011, "minorities make up a majority of babies in the US, part of a sweeping race change … that could reshape government policies." Three months earlier, The New York Times had told its readers that babies born to minorities were "on the verge" of becoming the majority of all US births.
For years Americans have been hearing about the coming nonwhite majority. With every fresh tranche of census data, the issue is raised anew. "Minorities, now roughly one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become the majority in 2042," the Census Bureau forecast in 2008, "with the nation projected to be 54 percent minority in 2050." Savor the absurdity of the phrase "54 percent minority." It isn't the only thing about this issue that is irrational.
To begin with, all the ballyhoo about America's impending metamorphosis from white to nonwhite makes sense only if white Hispanics aren't what they say they are. Census Bureau guidelines specify that "Hispanics may be of any race" and that "The federal government treats Hispanic origin and race as separate and distinct concepts." In the 2010 US Census, 50.5 million Americans identified themselves as ethnically Hispanic; of those, more than half -- 26.7 million -- were white. The only way to conjure up a looming nonwhite majority is to arbitrarily subtract whites of Hispanic origin from the nation's overall white population.
That "sweeping race change," in other words, is a trick of definition. Maybe you relish the prospect of whites becoming a minority of the American population or maybe you dread it -- or maybe, in an era when more newlyweds than ever are marrying across racial lines, you wonder why anyone is still obsessed with race and color.
But whatever your attitude, there is no point waiting up for The End of White America. It isn't coming. Drill down into the Census Bureau's latest population estimates, for example, and it turns out that of the 3,996,537 babies younger than age 1, nearly 72 percent are white. The only way to shrink that very hefty majority to less than half is to exclude the nearly 900,000 white babies whose ethnic background is Hispanic.
The same is true of the "54 percent minority" scheduled to arrive by 2050. What the data in the bureau's spreadsheets actually project is that white Americans, who now constitute nearly 80 percent of the population, will make up 74 percent by midcentury. Only if tens of millions of white Hispanics aren't counted as white will America in 2050 be anything other than a majority-white nation.
There may be those who simply refuse to regard Hispanics as white, perhaps because of bigotry or ignorance or because they never saw Rita Hayworth, Martin Sheen, Raquel Welch, or Andy Garcia. But then, there have always been Americans with curious ideas of who could and couldn't be "white." Benjamin Franklin was sure that German immigrants were not only non-white but unassimilable; Henry Cabot Lodge said the same thing about Russians, Poles, and Greeks. There was a time when US immigration policy classified Irish, Italians, and Jews as non-white, and when state laws required any resident with "one drop of Negro blood" to be listed as black.
To us, looking back, all those distinctions today seem ludicrous. A generation or two down the road, it will doubtless seem just as ludicrous that anyone would ever have thought of Hispanics as anything other than part of the broad, "white," American mainstream. Perhaps by then the very idea of race -- white, black, or anything else -- will finally have been discarded, and children will marvel at the idea that color of skin or shape of eye could ever have mattered so much.
SOURCE: Jeff Jacoby - Townhall.com
None of that was true.
None of that was new, either. The Census Bureau keeps dangling commonplace demographic data as if they were a dramatic racial revelation, and the press keeps taking the bait. The stories this month about minority births becoming the majority could have been recycled from a year ago, when the same thing was being reported -- and with the same air of history in the making. "For the first time," an AP story declared in June 2011, "minorities make up a majority of babies in the US, part of a sweeping race change … that could reshape government policies." Three months earlier, The New York Times had told its readers that babies born to minorities were "on the verge" of becoming the majority of all US births.
For years Americans have been hearing about the coming nonwhite majority. With every fresh tranche of census data, the issue is raised anew. "Minorities, now roughly one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become the majority in 2042," the Census Bureau forecast in 2008, "with the nation projected to be 54 percent minority in 2050." Savor the absurdity of the phrase "54 percent minority." It isn't the only thing about this issue that is irrational.
To begin with, all the ballyhoo about America's impending metamorphosis from white to nonwhite makes sense only if white Hispanics aren't what they say they are. Census Bureau guidelines specify that "Hispanics may be of any race" and that "The federal government treats Hispanic origin and race as separate and distinct concepts." In the 2010 US Census, 50.5 million Americans identified themselves as ethnically Hispanic; of those, more than half -- 26.7 million -- were white. The only way to conjure up a looming nonwhite majority is to arbitrarily subtract whites of Hispanic origin from the nation's overall white population.
That "sweeping race change," in other words, is a trick of definition. Maybe you relish the prospect of whites becoming a minority of the American population or maybe you dread it -- or maybe, in an era when more newlyweds than ever are marrying across racial lines, you wonder why anyone is still obsessed with race and color.
But whatever your attitude, there is no point waiting up for The End of White America. It isn't coming. Drill down into the Census Bureau's latest population estimates, for example, and it turns out that of the 3,996,537 babies younger than age 1, nearly 72 percent are white. The only way to shrink that very hefty majority to less than half is to exclude the nearly 900,000 white babies whose ethnic background is Hispanic.
The same is true of the "54 percent minority" scheduled to arrive by 2050. What the data in the bureau's spreadsheets actually project is that white Americans, who now constitute nearly 80 percent of the population, will make up 74 percent by midcentury. Only if tens of millions of white Hispanics aren't counted as white will America in 2050 be anything other than a majority-white nation.
There may be those who simply refuse to regard Hispanics as white, perhaps because of bigotry or ignorance or because they never saw Rita Hayworth, Martin Sheen, Raquel Welch, or Andy Garcia. But then, there have always been Americans with curious ideas of who could and couldn't be "white." Benjamin Franklin was sure that German immigrants were not only non-white but unassimilable; Henry Cabot Lodge said the same thing about Russians, Poles, and Greeks. There was a time when US immigration policy classified Irish, Italians, and Jews as non-white, and when state laws required any resident with "one drop of Negro blood" to be listed as black.
To us, looking back, all those distinctions today seem ludicrous. A generation or two down the road, it will doubtless seem just as ludicrous that anyone would ever have thought of Hispanics as anything other than part of the broad, "white," American mainstream. Perhaps by then the very idea of race -- white, black, or anything else -- will finally have been discarded, and children will marvel at the idea that color of skin or shape of eye could ever have mattered so much.
SOURCE: Jeff Jacoby - Townhall.com
Surveillance video of MacArthur Causeway shooting (Face eating streaker)
This surveillance video from a camera on the Miami Herald building shows a police officer shooting the suspect, as well as the aftermath, when many more patrol cars arrived.
SOURCE: Miami Herald
Bilderberg power masters meet in the US
Activists protest close to the Suvretta House five-star hotel in the chic Swiss ski station of St Moritz, where the Bilderberg Group is holding its annual meeting on June 9, 2011. (AFP Photo / Fabrice Coffrini)
Every time a Bilderberg Meeting takes place, important things happen. The last time they met in the US was an election year, 2008 – and the world got Obama. This year they’re back in the US: will they decide who the next president will be?
When in 2008 they gathered from June 5 to 8 in Chantilly, Virginia – just a stone’s throw from the Washington DC – Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were neck-in-neck in the battle for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidacy.
On June 5 of that year, Barack and Hillary mysteriously “disappeared” for some hours “somewhere in the DC area.” Their agendas blocked out, they clearly sneaked off to “Meet the Bilderbergers.”
The media kept mum about that, save for an Associated Press report on the campaign trail saying that, "reporters traveling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair (i.e. Obama and Hillary) when they arrived at Dulles International Airport after an event in Northern Virginia and Obama was not aboard the airplane. Asked at the time about the Illinois Senator's whereabouts, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs smiled and declined to comment." (The AP dispatch “Obama and Clinton meet, discuss uniting Democrats” is, strangely, “no longer available” on their website).
Be that as it may, two days later, Hillary withdrew from the race and Obama became the presidential candidate. Did Bilderberg make Hillary “an offer she couldn’t refuse” to clear the way for Obama to the White House? Did they promise her that she would become his Secretary of State?
Although most Bilderberg annual meetings are held in Europe – France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, England, Scotland, Norway – this US election year they’re again gathering at the Westfield Marriott Hotel in Virginia from May 30 to June 3. Either they’re very fond of that place… or of US elections… or both…!
So the question is: will “key presidential candidacy decisions” be made again this year? Will a Republican wildcard appear? A “God-inspired Burning Bush” of some sort, perhaps?
Exerting Global Leverage
A favorite Bilderberg method consists of inviting wannabe future heads of state to their meetings to determine whether they will go along with their agenda. We thus saw George H. W. Bush attend their 1985 meeting, Bill Clinton attend their 1991 meeting, Tony Blair in 1993, and Romano Prodi, former head of the EU Commission, in 1999.
So what exactly is Bilderberg? It’s neither an organization nor a lobby. The “Bilderberg Meetings,” as they dub themselves in their (apparently) official website www.bilderbergmeetings.com, is a “by-invitation-only” club of around 140 very high-power people from business, finance, oil, politics, media, industry, academia and nobility who come together in a very private no-media / no cameras / extremely-tight-security surroundings to discuss… Well… there’s the rub: what exactly do they discuss?
They describe themselves as “a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced. Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued.”
True enough. Actually, they don’t need to because each individual member’s power is so very vast that whatever they agree will forcefully span the globe through their far-reaching leverage and clout.
A Global Web of Private Power
Though very high up on the Pyramid, Bilderberg is not the Global Elite’s power center.
Rather, Bilderberg is a key group within a much more vast, more complex, less centralized, and highly effective Global Power Network, where they interact and overlap with other organizations, clubs, lobbies and groups, all having common economic, financial, social and (geo)political objectives in the Globalist Agenda.
This includes such key entities as the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (long-term geopolitical planners), its London-based sister entity Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka “Chatham House”), RAND Corp., CSIS, the American Enterprise Institute (strategic affairs specialists), Tavistock Institute in London (mass psychology research), the Carnegie Endowment, and the Trilateral Commission “umbrella” entity (founded 1973 by Rockefeller / Morgan / Rothschild interests, geared to coordinating the Americas, Europe and the East).
These so-called “Think Tanks” in turn interact with consultancies like Kissinger Associates, The Carlyle Group (specializing in oil strategies and having the Bush, Bin Laden and Baker families as key shareholders), or Trilateralist Claus Schwab’s World Economic Forum.
Thus, Bilderberg is basically part of that very powerful Global Private Power Web; a “node” so to speak… And a very powerful one at that!!
It’s therefore no surprise to see that last year’s attendee list looks like a Who’s Who of banking, industrial and media CEO top brass: Deutsche Bank, HSBC, CitiCorp, European Central Bank, US Federal Reserve Bank, Lazard Frères, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, World Bank, Bank of Canada, AXA, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Fiat, Nestle, Novartis, Coca-Cola, Airbus, Eni, Telecom Italy, ExxonMobil, Alcoa, Marks & Spencer, Die Zeit, The Economist.
As their website points out about Meeting participants, “about one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education and communications. Participants attend Bilderberg in a private and not an official capacity.”
European nobility regularly attend too: the Dutch Queen, the Spanish King and Queen, Norway’s Crown Prince…
Bilderberg’s high-power participants interact with, and are cross-represented on, the global private power web through membership and directorship in the Trilateral Commission, CFR, AEI, governments, corporations, banks, media and others.
Interestingly, also in attendance are founders and top executives of giant Internet management and intelligence gathering companies as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Microsoft.
Clearly, they run countries around the world, not voting citizens…
Perhaps it’s high time “We the People” in every country started listening to those of us saying,“It’s the Bilderbergers and Trilateralists, Stupid!”
SOURCE: Adrian Salbuchi for RT
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Why America Is Slouching Towards Third World Status
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity" --"The Second Coming", William Butler Yeats
Yeats' lines aptly describe our current age of political mediocrity. As we consider our politicians, we can hardly say that they're our best. And the worst of them are full of passionate intensity, with passions driven by ideology, rather than fact-based analysis.
The United States has been in decline relative to other countries for the last 30 years. On key metrics, we've fallen behind our peer group of industrialized countries, such as the UK, France, Germany, and Japan.
Am I exaggerating? Well, according to the Corruption Perception Index, we rank 24th in the world (only slightly better than Qatar) for public sector corruption. We rank 25th (way behind our peer group) in the OECD for math scores among 15-year-olds.
Over the past 30 years, our national debt has grown from about 30 percent of GDP to about 100 percent, and will become much worse based on current trends. In a recent survey of 10,000 Harvard Business School Alumni, "66 percent of respondents see the U.S. falling behind emerging economies." It is difficult to find many encouraging metrics.
If the above statistics don't convince you, visit the New Delhi International Airport, then compare it with our JFK or Newark International Airports. In many areas, our infrastructure is an embarrassment, already inferior to that of many third world countries.
These facts (and many others) have escaped Romney, Santorum and our current group of Republican leaders. Obama and the Democrats aren't doing significantly better at confronting these challenges.
In the 19th century, America aggressively compared itself against the world, and aspired to be "best in class." We were an early adopter of kindergarten because we saw evidence that it would improve educational outcomes. In 1862, the U.S. was suffering through the Civil War, but Congress still had the foresight to pass the Land Grant Colleges Act, which created some of our finest universities. This investment was made because it was important for our country's growth, and the U.S. clearly lagged behind Europe in college and university education.
Today, many of us suffer from what Thorstein Veblen called "trained incapacity" and John Dewey described as "occupational psychosis." We filter the world through our own ideological training, believing only what fits our story. Or, as Stephen Colbert, cultural commentator and 2008 Peabody Award winner commented:
'It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all... What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?... Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.'
Many Americans still have an almost cult-like belief that America is the greatest nation on earth. They systematically reject evidence suggesting we have significant room for improvement.
Sounds overly-dramatic? When opposing President Obama's health care reform proposals, Speaker of the House John Boehner repeatedly proclaimed (with passionate intensity) that America has the "best health care system in the world." Boehner is correct only if you exclude the entire developed world from the comparison. The U.S. ranks 50th for longevity and 49th for infant mortality, where we're barely ahead of Belarus, Croatia and Lithuania.
I defy anyone to name a single important health care metric where the U.S. is considered a best-practice example as a nation. The only thing we lead the world in... is cost of health care. We have the world's most expensive health care system. For example, our health care system costs almost twice Canada's, but at best we produce approximately equivalent results.
For Boehner to say we have the best health care system in the world, and not be laughed out of office, is at best 'trained incapacity' or 'occupational psychosis.'
Boehner doesn't have to support Obama's health care reform plan. Obama's reforms might make things worse. But, let's have an actual debate grounded in facts, without inventing (and propagating) falsehoods about the current system.
China has been one of the most successful countries economically of the last 30 years. It's fitting then to quote the architect of its economic renaissance Deng Xiaoping: "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice." For too many Americans, what matters is not whether the policy works, but whether it fits our preconceived ideologies.
It's the ultimate irony that we need to take the advice of a communist hardliner to put aside ideology, and focus on fact-based pragmatic solutions. Otherwise we'll continue our slouch towards Third World status.
SOURCE: Business Insider
Are full of passionate intensity" --"The Second Coming", William Butler Yeats
Yeats' lines aptly describe our current age of political mediocrity. As we consider our politicians, we can hardly say that they're our best. And the worst of them are full of passionate intensity, with passions driven by ideology, rather than fact-based analysis.
The United States has been in decline relative to other countries for the last 30 years. On key metrics, we've fallen behind our peer group of industrialized countries, such as the UK, France, Germany, and Japan.
Am I exaggerating? Well, according to the Corruption Perception Index, we rank 24th in the world (only slightly better than Qatar) for public sector corruption. We rank 25th (way behind our peer group) in the OECD for math scores among 15-year-olds.
Over the past 30 years, our national debt has grown from about 30 percent of GDP to about 100 percent, and will become much worse based on current trends. In a recent survey of 10,000 Harvard Business School Alumni, "66 percent of respondents see the U.S. falling behind emerging economies." It is difficult to find many encouraging metrics.
If the above statistics don't convince you, visit the New Delhi International Airport, then compare it with our JFK or Newark International Airports. In many areas, our infrastructure is an embarrassment, already inferior to that of many third world countries.
These facts (and many others) have escaped Romney, Santorum and our current group of Republican leaders. Obama and the Democrats aren't doing significantly better at confronting these challenges.
In the 19th century, America aggressively compared itself against the world, and aspired to be "best in class." We were an early adopter of kindergarten because we saw evidence that it would improve educational outcomes. In 1862, the U.S. was suffering through the Civil War, but Congress still had the foresight to pass the Land Grant Colleges Act, which created some of our finest universities. This investment was made because it was important for our country's growth, and the U.S. clearly lagged behind Europe in college and university education.
Today, many of us suffer from what Thorstein Veblen called "trained incapacity" and John Dewey described as "occupational psychosis." We filter the world through our own ideological training, believing only what fits our story. Or, as Stephen Colbert, cultural commentator and 2008 Peabody Award winner commented:
'It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all... What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?... Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.'
Many Americans still have an almost cult-like belief that America is the greatest nation on earth. They systematically reject evidence suggesting we have significant room for improvement.
Sounds overly-dramatic? When opposing President Obama's health care reform proposals, Speaker of the House John Boehner repeatedly proclaimed (with passionate intensity) that America has the "best health care system in the world." Boehner is correct only if you exclude the entire developed world from the comparison. The U.S. ranks 50th for longevity and 49th for infant mortality, where we're barely ahead of Belarus, Croatia and Lithuania.
I defy anyone to name a single important health care metric where the U.S. is considered a best-practice example as a nation. The only thing we lead the world in... is cost of health care. We have the world's most expensive health care system. For example, our health care system costs almost twice Canada's, but at best we produce approximately equivalent results.
For Boehner to say we have the best health care system in the world, and not be laughed out of office, is at best 'trained incapacity' or 'occupational psychosis.'
Boehner doesn't have to support Obama's health care reform plan. Obama's reforms might make things worse. But, let's have an actual debate grounded in facts, without inventing (and propagating) falsehoods about the current system.
China has been one of the most successful countries economically of the last 30 years. It's fitting then to quote the architect of its economic renaissance Deng Xiaoping: "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice." For too many Americans, what matters is not whether the policy works, but whether it fits our preconceived ideologies.
It's the ultimate irony that we need to take the advice of a communist hardliner to put aside ideology, and focus on fact-based pragmatic solutions. Otherwise we'll continue our slouch towards Third World status.
SOURCE: Business Insider
Obama’s First Shovel Ready Job
Are you still wondering where President Obama’s ‘shovel ready’ jobs are? Well, I found one. Poop 911 is a company, like the President that is in the business of shoveling sh**. Poop 911 shovels doggy doodoo, while President Obama shovels Bullsh**.
Several months back I was driving down the road when I saw this car wrapped in a Poop 911 advertisement. In quoting myself, I yelled out, “Holy Crap!” Fortunately for me, the driver of the car was heading to the same gas station I was, so in true El Sharko reporting form, I had to ask him about his car and business.
The driver was more than happy to discuss the business, and I inquired out of sheer curiosity, both as a dog owner and a possible client. Basically, how the business works on a “poop by poop” basis. They charge the home owner by the week, or in some instances, by the amount of poop they pick up. Apparently, this biz has been around for a while but is fairly new to Fort Lauderdale. And considering that Broward County politics are controlled by the Democratic Party, shoveling the sh** business in this county is a pretty stable long-term business proposition.
SOURCE: The Shark Tank
Greek Hospital Threatens To Hold Newborn Until Payments Are Received
The reality of the situation has caused Greek institutions to take drastic measures in order to stay afloat.
One hospital in Athens reportedly threatened to refuse a mother the right to her own newborn child until she was able to pay the cost of her Caesarean section.
According to the BBC, the bill came to 1,200 euros, or $1,500 in American currency.
Doctor Katerina Stypsanelli, who works for a sister hospital, told the network that while the hospitals would have simply forgiven such debts in the past, they are now forced to make such demands of even their poorest of patients.
“It is not the hospital’s fault,” Stypsanelli, who also works with Women Against the Debt, told the BBC. “It is the government’s policy and budget tightening which is forcing their hand.”
The mother, identified only by the alias Anna, does not qualify for free non-emergency health care. Such coverage is allegedly only available to those who are either employed or are not delinquent on their taxes.
“Who wouldn’t be scared by that [situation]?” Anna said to the BBC. “You have just given birth and they want to keep hold of your baby if you can’t afford to pay? Don’t these people have children of their own?”
The same threat was made by the hospital when Anna gave birth to her first child less than two years ago. At that time, however, she was employed and able to find the money.
This time around, without employment, Anna feared the worse until Stypsanelli and WAD intervened.
“I made a call to the director of the hospital and he gave the order to allow her to take the baby but told her to pay in installments,” she told BBC. “It is every woman’s right to access health care and it is every woman’s right to have a child. These policies against those down on their luck and vulnerable are just shameful.”
Stypsanelli, who noted that Anna’s case is not unique, added to the BBC, “This is not a pawn shop where we hold your ring as a deposit.”
Hugo Chavez In Amerca: A 2nd Obama Term Means No Indepdendent Judiciary
President Obama’s most blatant first term abuses can be struck down by the check on Presidential power by an independent judiciary. For example, last year Obama purported to make “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), when the Senate was not in recess. But the first time the NLRB so constituted tries to bring any enforcement action for any violation of any of its regulations, the defendant can nullify the prosecution by arguing it was not authorized by a legally constituted Board.
Similarly, the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established by Dodd-Frank is blatantly unconstitutional. It is organized under the structure of the Federal Reserve Board, which is not part of the Executive Branch, but technically a private sector organization with government ties. So it is not subject to Executive Branch oversight. Moreover, it is not subject to Congressional oversight and funding either, because it is authorized to draw its funding for its own budget which it alone is authorized to set.
Consequently, it is even more unconstitutional than the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) established by the Sarbanes Oxley Act, which the Supreme Court struck down in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2010. The Court ruled that the PCAOB lacked Executive Branch oversight and so was unconstitutional as in violation of the doctrine of separation of powers.
As a result, as soon as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tries to enforce any of its regulations, the defendant will be able to raise in its defense that the Bureau is unconstitutional and must be struck down.
But Obama has already shown in his first term that he can flout court decisions and orders. Outright lawlessness occurred in the offshore drilling moratorium imposed by Obama’s Interior Dept. in response to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. Phil Kerpen recounts in his book Democracy Denied: How Obama Is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America—and How to Stop Him that Obama appointed an expert task force to make recommendations concerning how the federal government should respond to the spill. The task force report featured a recommendation for a six month moratorium on all deepwater drilling activities. But as Kerpen explains, “the recommendation for a moratorium was not supported by the authors of the task force report.” Task force authors wrote in a letter to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Senators David Vitter and Mary Landrieu,
“[W]e are concerned that our names are connected with the moratorium as proposed in the executive summary of the report. There is an implication that we have somehow agreed to or ‘peer reviewed’ the main recommendation of that report. This is not the case….[T]he scope of the moratorium on drilling which is in the executive summary differs in important ways from the recommendation in the draft which we reviewed. We believe the report does not justify the moratorium as written and that the moratorium as changed will not contribute measurably to increased safety and will have immediate and long term economic effects.”
Kerpen reports that the Executive Summary for the report was rewritten to endorse the moratorium by the staff of former White House energy czar Carol Browner. President Obama then used his staff rewritten task force report to justify the offshore drilling moratorium “with full knowledge that it would put more than 23,000 Americans out of work at a time of record high unemployment.” This is yet another example of the Obama public relations style I have called “calculated deception,” more worthy of a third world authoritarian government than the world’s leading liberal democracy.
Kerpen continues, explaining “On June 23, 2010, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued a stinging 22 page decision, [with] an injunction to overturn the moratorium based on the political manipulation and the Interior Department’s utter failure to justify the breadth of the moratorium.” Judge Feldman wrote regarding the studies Interior cited for the moratorium:
“How these studies support a finding that shear equipment does not work consistently at 500 feet is incomprehensible. If some drilling equipment parts are flawed, is it rational to say all are? Are all planes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed and rather over-bearing.”
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Obama Administration’s request for a stay of Feldman’s ruling. Yet Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar “reimposed a very similar moratorium disregarding the rulings of the two courts,” Kerpen reports. Salazar imperiously pronounced, “We will only lift the moratorium when I as Secretary of Interior am comfortable that we have significantly reduced those risks.” Salazar and the Interior Department were held in contempt of court by Feldman, to no avail.
Kerpen also discusses in detail the FCC’s adoption of net neutrality regulations on December 21, 2010. The foundation for those regulations is that the companies that invest in and build the Internet infrastructure can’t be trusted to manage it, arbitrarily favoring some users over others. So the government needs to step in and manage it, eventually taking over control of the Net.
Of course, the experience has been that under private management in the competitive market, the Internet has been the freest institution in the world. But wherever the government has stepped in to control the Web, that freedom has been restricted or squelched.
Obama’s FCC appointees adopted this regulation even though just 8 months earlier the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in Comcast v. FCC that the FCC has no statutory authority for it. Kerpen also notes that in the 2010 Congressional campaigns, 95 candidates signed the pledge of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to promote Net Neutrality and Internet regulation, and all 95 lost. Moreover, a bill introduced in Congress to provide FCC authority for such regulation garnered only 27 co-sponsors.
Yet Obama continues to implement such regulation heedless of the people, the courts and Congress.
Perhaps even more ominously for a second term, under Attorney General Eric Holder the Justice Department can’t be trusted to enforce the law against the Obama Administration or any of its political allies. The New Black Panther Party conducted blatant voter intimidation tactics in Philadelphia in 2008. When the Bush Administration sued the lawbreakers for violating voting rights and civil rights laws, the defendants failed to respond. But when Holder came into office, he dropped the prosecution.
Far more disgraceful and ominous is the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, where Holder himself and even the President seem to be personally involved. In violation of federal law, the Administration allowed Mexican drug dealer gang operatives to purchase powerful guns in Arizona and walk them across the border untracked. The guns have since shown up at murder scenes, with American law enforcement officials among the dead.
Transparently, the entire operation was a plot to discredit gun sales in America, and provide a political foundation for authoritarian gun control laws squelching the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. As President Obama has said himself, “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” Operation Fast and Furious cannot be legally justified by such a plot, and so the federal officials involved in the operation have committed federal crimes.
But Holder will not prosecute anyone. Instead we will see unfold in a second term a constitutional crisis, as Congressional Committees seek to enforce subpoenas for documents relating to the scandal. But with no independent federal law enforcement, this is just the beginning of the lawlessness of a second term.
In the first term, federal laws were enacted granting the President extremely broad powers over the American economy and people. We see from the precedents above that Obama will stretch even these laws beyond their bounds. Dodd-Frank gave Obama authority to take over and nationalize major American companies, particularly in the financial community, but not limited to that. Obamacare gave Obama broad authority over the entire health care system, and the personal health care of each American. We can already see a whiff of the pending abuse of that in Obama’s use of the law to assault the Catholic Church.
Moreover, while even an overwhelmingly Democrat controlled Congress refused to pass cap and trade, Obama’s EPA is asserting the authority to implement it anyway. This will result in vastly increased energy costs, shutting down still more energy production and further cratering the economy. Don’t be fooled by the EPA’s recently issued moderate fracking regulations. Those serve as the foundation for reissued radical regulations in a second term that will shut down the fracking natural gas and oil booms that got past the Obama Administration extremists in the first term on state and private land. A second term EPA will assert authority over those state and private lands, and those that don’t like it can knock themselves out trying to sue the Administration.
As Steve McCann wrote at the American Thinker on May 8,
“The overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand that Obama’s first term was dedicated to putting in place executive power to enable him and the administration to fulfill the campaign promise of ‘transforming America’ in his second term regardless of which political party controls Congress. That is why his re-election team is virtually ignoring the plight of incumbent or prospective Democratic Party office holders. The most significant accomplishment of Obama’s first term is to make Congress irrelevant. Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial, and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency.”
Indeed, Congress will not even be able to control Obama by controlling the budget and federal spending. As McCann adds,
“The most significant power Congress has is the control of the purse-strings as all spending must be approved by them. However, once re-elected, Barack Obama, as confirmed by his willingness to do or say anything and his unscrupulous re-election tactics, would not only threaten government shutdowns but would deliberately withhold payments to those dependent on government support as a means of intimidating and forcing a Republican controlled Congress to surrender to his demands, thus neutering their ability to control the administration through spending constraints.”
Recall that during the debt limit battle last fall Obama threatened to cut off Social Security benefits unless he got his way, even though he had no legal authority to do so. Expect more such abuse of the public in a second Obama term.
But the complete transformation of Barack Obama into Hugo Chavez will occur in a second term through judicial appointments. By the end of a second Obama term, a majority of federal judges will have been appointed by Obama. The ultimate effect of that has not been noticed because the barest conservative majority on the Supreme Court still rides herd over the lower courts.
Of course that slim majority will be gone in a second Obama term. Justice Scalia is today 76. Justice Kennedy will be 76 in July. Justice Thomas will be 65 in June, but as a black man he has a lower life expectancy. Even without a retirement, the whole Republic would hang on a heart attack or stroke among any one of these elderly men. For the Obama Left would then have majority control of the Court.
Note, however, that Justice Ginsburg, with health problems, is 79 today. Replacing her with a conservative justice would mean a solid conservative majority on the Court. Consequently, the Supreme Court, the independence of the judiciary, the rule of law, and ultimately our constitutional republic, are at stake in this election.
SOURCE: Forbes
Similarly, the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established by Dodd-Frank is blatantly unconstitutional. It is organized under the structure of the Federal Reserve Board, which is not part of the Executive Branch, but technically a private sector organization with government ties. So it is not subject to Executive Branch oversight. Moreover, it is not subject to Congressional oversight and funding either, because it is authorized to draw its funding for its own budget which it alone is authorized to set.
Consequently, it is even more unconstitutional than the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) established by the Sarbanes Oxley Act, which the Supreme Court struck down in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2010. The Court ruled that the PCAOB lacked Executive Branch oversight and so was unconstitutional as in violation of the doctrine of separation of powers.
As a result, as soon as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tries to enforce any of its regulations, the defendant will be able to raise in its defense that the Bureau is unconstitutional and must be struck down.
But Obama has already shown in his first term that he can flout court decisions and orders. Outright lawlessness occurred in the offshore drilling moratorium imposed by Obama’s Interior Dept. in response to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. Phil Kerpen recounts in his book Democracy Denied: How Obama Is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America—and How to Stop Him that Obama appointed an expert task force to make recommendations concerning how the federal government should respond to the spill. The task force report featured a recommendation for a six month moratorium on all deepwater drilling activities. But as Kerpen explains, “the recommendation for a moratorium was not supported by the authors of the task force report.” Task force authors wrote in a letter to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Senators David Vitter and Mary Landrieu,
“[W]e are concerned that our names are connected with the moratorium as proposed in the executive summary of the report. There is an implication that we have somehow agreed to or ‘peer reviewed’ the main recommendation of that report. This is not the case….[T]he scope of the moratorium on drilling which is in the executive summary differs in important ways from the recommendation in the draft which we reviewed. We believe the report does not justify the moratorium as written and that the moratorium as changed will not contribute measurably to increased safety and will have immediate and long term economic effects.”
Kerpen reports that the Executive Summary for the report was rewritten to endorse the moratorium by the staff of former White House energy czar Carol Browner. President Obama then used his staff rewritten task force report to justify the offshore drilling moratorium “with full knowledge that it would put more than 23,000 Americans out of work at a time of record high unemployment.” This is yet another example of the Obama public relations style I have called “calculated deception,” more worthy of a third world authoritarian government than the world’s leading liberal democracy.
Kerpen continues, explaining “On June 23, 2010, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued a stinging 22 page decision, [with] an injunction to overturn the moratorium based on the political manipulation and the Interior Department’s utter failure to justify the breadth of the moratorium.” Judge Feldman wrote regarding the studies Interior cited for the moratorium:
“How these studies support a finding that shear equipment does not work consistently at 500 feet is incomprehensible. If some drilling equipment parts are flawed, is it rational to say all are? Are all planes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed and rather over-bearing.”
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Obama Administration’s request for a stay of Feldman’s ruling. Yet Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar “reimposed a very similar moratorium disregarding the rulings of the two courts,” Kerpen reports. Salazar imperiously pronounced, “We will only lift the moratorium when I as Secretary of Interior am comfortable that we have significantly reduced those risks.” Salazar and the Interior Department were held in contempt of court by Feldman, to no avail.
Kerpen also discusses in detail the FCC’s adoption of net neutrality regulations on December 21, 2010. The foundation for those regulations is that the companies that invest in and build the Internet infrastructure can’t be trusted to manage it, arbitrarily favoring some users over others. So the government needs to step in and manage it, eventually taking over control of the Net.
Of course, the experience has been that under private management in the competitive market, the Internet has been the freest institution in the world. But wherever the government has stepped in to control the Web, that freedom has been restricted or squelched.
Obama’s FCC appointees adopted this regulation even though just 8 months earlier the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in Comcast v. FCC that the FCC has no statutory authority for it. Kerpen also notes that in the 2010 Congressional campaigns, 95 candidates signed the pledge of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to promote Net Neutrality and Internet regulation, and all 95 lost. Moreover, a bill introduced in Congress to provide FCC authority for such regulation garnered only 27 co-sponsors.
Yet Obama continues to implement such regulation heedless of the people, the courts and Congress.
Perhaps even more ominously for a second term, under Attorney General Eric Holder the Justice Department can’t be trusted to enforce the law against the Obama Administration or any of its political allies. The New Black Panther Party conducted blatant voter intimidation tactics in Philadelphia in 2008. When the Bush Administration sued the lawbreakers for violating voting rights and civil rights laws, the defendants failed to respond. But when Holder came into office, he dropped the prosecution.
Far more disgraceful and ominous is the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, where Holder himself and even the President seem to be personally involved. In violation of federal law, the Administration allowed Mexican drug dealer gang operatives to purchase powerful guns in Arizona and walk them across the border untracked. The guns have since shown up at murder scenes, with American law enforcement officials among the dead.
Transparently, the entire operation was a plot to discredit gun sales in America, and provide a political foundation for authoritarian gun control laws squelching the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. As President Obama has said himself, “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” Operation Fast and Furious cannot be legally justified by such a plot, and so the federal officials involved in the operation have committed federal crimes.
But Holder will not prosecute anyone. Instead we will see unfold in a second term a constitutional crisis, as Congressional Committees seek to enforce subpoenas for documents relating to the scandal. But with no independent federal law enforcement, this is just the beginning of the lawlessness of a second term.
In the first term, federal laws were enacted granting the President extremely broad powers over the American economy and people. We see from the precedents above that Obama will stretch even these laws beyond their bounds. Dodd-Frank gave Obama authority to take over and nationalize major American companies, particularly in the financial community, but not limited to that. Obamacare gave Obama broad authority over the entire health care system, and the personal health care of each American. We can already see a whiff of the pending abuse of that in Obama’s use of the law to assault the Catholic Church.
Moreover, while even an overwhelmingly Democrat controlled Congress refused to pass cap and trade, Obama’s EPA is asserting the authority to implement it anyway. This will result in vastly increased energy costs, shutting down still more energy production and further cratering the economy. Don’t be fooled by the EPA’s recently issued moderate fracking regulations. Those serve as the foundation for reissued radical regulations in a second term that will shut down the fracking natural gas and oil booms that got past the Obama Administration extremists in the first term on state and private land. A second term EPA will assert authority over those state and private lands, and those that don’t like it can knock themselves out trying to sue the Administration.
As Steve McCann wrote at the American Thinker on May 8,
“The overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand that Obama’s first term was dedicated to putting in place executive power to enable him and the administration to fulfill the campaign promise of ‘transforming America’ in his second term regardless of which political party controls Congress. That is why his re-election team is virtually ignoring the plight of incumbent or prospective Democratic Party office holders. The most significant accomplishment of Obama’s first term is to make Congress irrelevant. Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial, and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency.”
Indeed, Congress will not even be able to control Obama by controlling the budget and federal spending. As McCann adds,
“The most significant power Congress has is the control of the purse-strings as all spending must be approved by them. However, once re-elected, Barack Obama, as confirmed by his willingness to do or say anything and his unscrupulous re-election tactics, would not only threaten government shutdowns but would deliberately withhold payments to those dependent on government support as a means of intimidating and forcing a Republican controlled Congress to surrender to his demands, thus neutering their ability to control the administration through spending constraints.”
Recall that during the debt limit battle last fall Obama threatened to cut off Social Security benefits unless he got his way, even though he had no legal authority to do so. Expect more such abuse of the public in a second Obama term.
But the complete transformation of Barack Obama into Hugo Chavez will occur in a second term through judicial appointments. By the end of a second Obama term, a majority of federal judges will have been appointed by Obama. The ultimate effect of that has not been noticed because the barest conservative majority on the Supreme Court still rides herd over the lower courts.
Of course that slim majority will be gone in a second Obama term. Justice Scalia is today 76. Justice Kennedy will be 76 in July. Justice Thomas will be 65 in June, but as a black man he has a lower life expectancy. Even without a retirement, the whole Republic would hang on a heart attack or stroke among any one of these elderly men. For the Obama Left would then have majority control of the Court.
Note, however, that Justice Ginsburg, with health problems, is 79 today. Replacing her with a conservative justice would mean a solid conservative majority on the Court. Consequently, the Supreme Court, the independence of the judiciary, the rule of law, and ultimately our constitutional republic, are at stake in this election.
SOURCE: Forbes
The Cost of Moochies Travels: In Graphic Detail
Using the MSM's acknowledged $10 Million price tag for Moochie O'Bama's worldwide vacations, I have documented (in "unexpected" graphic detail) the cost in human suffering. Warning: Women and Children Hit Hardest.
SOURCE: Free Republic
SOURCE: Free Republic
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