Saturday, February 15, 2014
ALLEN WEST: Obama's despotic actions were predicted by Montesquieu
As I look back on this past week, I have to summarize it in one word: crisis.
Domestically we face a constitutional crisis with a president who doesn’t believe he must adhere to our fundamental system of governance. If you have some time, take a read through or refresh yourself on the “Spirit of the Laws” by Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu in 1748.
In that simple treatise, Montesquieu presented the idea of the separation of powers, checks and balances, and coequal branches of government. These ideas were adopted by our Founding Fathers, more specifically, James Madison, as he wrote the Constitution of the United States and the Federalist Papers – which I believe President Obama, the self-proclaimed constitutional scholar, has never read.
Montesquieu said, “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty. The same monarch or senate would enact tyrannical laws and execute them in a tyrannical manner.”
Montesquieu believed liberty was impossible if the judicial branch was not separated from the legislative and executive powers. He believed if the judiciary were combined with legislative power, individual life and liberty would be vulnerable to arbitrary control. Even worse, if the judiciary were combined with executive powers, judges would be oppressive and violent.
In the worst case of all, the same person or body would control all three powers.
Montesquieu, a champion of individual dignity and liberty, raised his voice against the despotic rule of the Bourbon monarchy of Louis XIV who boasted, “I am the state.” Montesquieu knew well that “constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority until he is confronted with limits.”
But as Montesquieu stood up to the despotic rule of the king, who will stand up to the despotic rule of Obama?
If no one accepts this mantle and casts down the gauntlet, the constitutional crisis we face will only be exacerbated. The cancer will further metastasize.
We are in the sixth year of Obama, and I predicted if we reelected this charlatan to a second term it would be the greatest Pavlovian experiment the world has ever known. America would reward the most abhorrent of behavior — and lo and behold, “yes we did.” America is in crisis. Who will be our Montesquieu? Who will stand in the arena as our Maximus?
Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News
If We Continue Down Europe's Path, Our Lives Will Look Like This:
Becoming more like Europe is not a good thing. But that is the path that we are currently on. For the most part, Europeans live in a socialist “Big Brother” system in which the government completely dominates your life from the cradle to the grave. Of course there are differences from country to country, but generally speaking the lives of most Europeans are very tightly regulated. You see, the truth is that high levels of individual liberty and freedom are considered to be “dangerous” by the European elite. They believe that if we are all allowed to just do whatever we want that it would result in utter chaos. They are convinced that life is better when those that are smarter (them) control the lives of everyone else. In essence, Europe is like a giant religious cult in many ways (minus the religion). With each passing year, the number of rules and regulations governing the daily lives of Europeans steadily grows, as does the level of control. If you try to live outside of that control, you could very well find yourself in a direct confrontation with the authorities very rapidly.
Just consider what is happening in Germany. Authorities there have stated repeatedly that they do not believe in having any “parallel societies”, and therefore everyone must participate in the system that the government has established.
That includes all children. In Germany today, almost all forms of homeschooling are illegal. In fact, one judge shockingly ruled that one set of parents could not have custody of their children because they might move them to another country and homeschool them there…A judge has issued a stunning verdict in a homeschooling case in Germany, ordering that the parents cannot have custody of their children because the family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a “concrete endangerment” to the children.
Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s case made international headlines in August when 20 armed police arrived with a battering ram and forcibly took their four children from their home in Darmstadt, Germany, and enrolled them in public school... the children, ages 7 to 14, were taken into police custody. They were allowed to return home three weeks later when their father and mother, given no choice by the federal bureaucracy in Germany, agreed to allow their kids to attend public schools despite their objection to the social and religious instruction there.
Are you starting to see what I meant when I compared Europe to a cult?
Friday, February 14, 2014
MOLON LABE: Connecticut Criminalizes The Second Amendment
Gun Control: In a massive display of civil disobedience, tens of thousands of state residents have refused to register what the left calls assault weapons, instantly making them criminals guilty of a felony.
The legacy of the Connecticut residents who used their privately owned firearms to help overthrow the tyrannical colonial rule of King George III, who probably considered their muskets the military-style assault weapon of the day, apparently lives on.
Connecticuters in the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands have refused to comply with a law, adopted after the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, requiring them to register what gun-control advocates consider assault weapons by the end of 2013.
As the Hartford Courant reports, as of Dec. 31 some 47,916 applications for assault weapons certificates had been received by state police. By some estimates, this represented as little as 15% of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents.Estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, place the number as high as 350,000.
As columnist Dan Haar notes in the Courant, this means that "as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely created tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps 100,000 people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have broken no other laws. By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D felonies."
The AR-15 is among those that must be registered, and represents 50% to 60% of all U.S. rifle sales in recent years, federal figures show. It was the weapon used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown, Conn., shooting and by James Holmes to kill 12 people and wound 58 in a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
Many such weapons are classified as military-style assault weapons simply on the basis of their "scary" (at least to liberals) appearance.
WHEN A GOVERNMENT RUNS OUT OF MONEY: Obama Lays Groundwork To Confiscate 401k and IRA Plans
This morning Reuters obtained a leaked proposal disclosing that European Union officials are looking for new and innovative ways to fund their immense debt levels. As noted by Zero Hedge, they’re no longer turning exclusively to central bankers to simply print more money as needed.
Because last year’s bank bail-in forcing the confiscation of funds from average depositors in Cyprus worked so well, EU regulators and bankers have determined that they’ll use a similar method to fund their future endeavors.In a nutshell, and in Reuters’ own words, “the savings of the European Union’s 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says.”
… The solution? “The Commission will ask the bloc’s insurance watchdog in the second half of this year for advice on a possible draft law “to mobilize more personal pension savings for long-term financing”, the document said.”
Mobilize, once again, is a more palatable word than, say, confiscate.
This is what happens when governments run out of money.
But if you think this is limited to just Europe, then consider the words of President Barack Obama in his recent State of the Union address.
For all intents and purposes, a similar groundwork is being laid right here in America.
They’ve already taken over the health care industry… why not nationalize our retirement savings while they’re at it?
Thursday, February 13, 2014
BREAKING: New Fed Chief Just as Delusional as the Last One
On Tuesday, new Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen went before Congress and confidently declared that "the economic recovery gained greater traction in the second half of last year" and that "substantial progress has been made in restoring the economy to health". This resulted in glowing headlines throughout the mainstream media such as this one from USA Today: "Yellen: Economy is improving at moderate pace". Sadly, tens of millions of Americans are going to believe what the mainstream media is telling them. But it isn't the truth. As you will see below, there are all sorts of signs that the economy is taking a turn for the worse. And when the next great economic crisis does strike, most Americans will be completely and totally unprepared because they trusted our "leaders" when they told us that everything would be just fine.
It is amazing how deceived people can be. Just consider the case of 56-year-old Brian Perry. He is a former law clerk that has applied for nearly 1,500 jobs since 2008 without any success. But he says that he is "optimistic" that he will get another job soon because he believes that the economy is recovering...
By his own count, Brian Perry has applied for nearly 1,500 jobs since being let go as a law clerk in 2008. The 56-year old Perry lives in Rhode Island, where the 9.1 percent unemployment rate is 2.5 percentage points above the national average.
Perry remains optimistic that a job is forthcoming. He thinks a more robust economy would create better opportunities for the long-term unemployed like him.
Let us certainly hope that Perry does find a new job soon. But if he does, it won't be because we are experiencing an "economic recovery". Just consider the following facts...
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
JUST ANOTHER REMINDER, MR. PRESIDENT: You swore to faithfully execute the law, not rewrite it!
Presidential Power: After making yet another unconstitutional and illegal change to ObamaCare, the president tells his French counterpart that it's good to be king of the United States, even if this emperor has no clothes.
In times past, tyrants would rule with scepter and sword. President Obama, as he recently stated, says he needs only his pen and his phone, something the Founding Fathers did not envision when they threw off the yoke of King George III and proclaimed a republic united under a Constitution that bowed to the consent of the governed.A republic, Ben Franklin is said to have remarked, if we can keep it, a struggle that gets harder with each passing day of this administration.
"I am not a dictator," Obama once said at a press conference, "I'm the president."
In his case, that's a distinction without a difference as he has proceeded to evade both the laws passed by Congress and the restraints placed on his office by the Constitution.
"That's the good thing as a president, I can do whatever I want," Obama quipped while visiting Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, Va., with French President Francois Hollande.
DEMOCRAT LOGIC COMIX: Someone Call Eric Holder
Enjoy, New York City!
Hat tip: Mark Levin.
AWESOME: Union Front Group Got Taxpayer Funds From Department of Labor to Push Minimum Wage Hikes
The U.S. Department of Labor handed over $275,000 in taxpayer-funded grants in 2009 to an organization that claimed to be a charitable nonprofit with tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service.
But that organization was not officially certified as a 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit until 2010, documents show.
The Restaurant Opportunity Center, or ROC-United, a national organization working to raise the minimum wage and improve working conditions for restaurant workers by combing the labor organizing muscle of powerful unions with Occupy Wall Street protest tactics, got the grant anyway.
The group is organizing several high profile events this week to highlight the $2.17 national minimum wage for tipped workers.
In the 2009 grant application, ROC United submitted a letter to the Department of Labor that showed the IRS had granted tax exempt status to ROC New York — an affiliated but legally separate organization — even though the $275,000 grant would flow to ROC United.
The department was either fooled by the application or didn’t check it closely enough.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
THE HILLARY PAPERS: Why Now?
Guest post by Lee Cary
Why are Diane Blair’s private papers archived at the University of Arkansas Special Collections Library just now becoming news?
The Washington Free Beacon article dated February 9, 2014, entitled “The Hillary Papers, Archive of 'closest friend' paints portrait of ruthless First Lady,” was featured in the Drudge Report this week.While the title is sensationalized by attaching the word “ruthless” to Hillary, the timing of the piece is more puzzling than sizzling.
Consider the key paragraph that summarizes the content of papers that have been available to the public since 2010:
“The records paint a complex portrait of Hillary Clinton, revealing her to be a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist who relished revenge against her adversaries and complained in private that nobody in the White House was ‘tough and mean enough.’”
So she’s loyal, devoted, cutthroat, and critical of wimps. Does that sound “ruthless – for a Presidential candidate?”
Then there’s her alleged reaction to Bill’s philandering. She’s portrayed as understanding and realistic by “putting his actions into context.” Blair writes, “She thinks she was not smart enough, not sensitive enough, not free enough of her own concerns and struggles to realize the price he was paying.”
In short, Hillary was a victim, but was/is willing to claim some degree of culpability.
“‘It was a lapse, but she says to his [Bill’s] credit he tried to break it off, tried to pull away, tried to manage someone who was clearly a ‘narcissistic loony toon’; but it was beyond control,’ wrote Blair.”
So it was really all Monica Lewinsky’s fault. Both Hillary and Bill were victims.
National Weather Service: High Accumulations of Global Warming in Southeast to "Make Travel Impossible"
National Weather Service meteorologist Michael Musher said ice accumulation forecasts "remain mind-boggling if not historical" in cities such as Atlanta, Athens and Augusta in Georgia, Columbia, S.C., and Raleigh, N.C.
"High ice accumulations will make travel impossible," the National Weather Service reported in an advisory Tuesday. "This has the potential to be a catastrophic event. Widespread power outages are possible as ice accumulates on trees and power lines and brings them down."
...The storm is forecast to move up the East Coast later Wednesday and into Thursday, potentially dropping as much as a foot of snow all the way from Virginia to New England, meteorologist Musher said.
More than 1,150 flights had been canceled nationwide Tuesday as of 12:05 p.m. ET, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.com. Almost 1,000 more had already been canceled for Wednesday.
As Climatologist and former NASA scientist Roy W. Spencer observes, "the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably."
In other words, those global warming fables you read and see in legacy media are bunk, plain and simple.
Monday, February 10, 2014
White House Unveils New Definition for the Phrase "Full Employment"
Words matter.
Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama said that in a 2008 campaign speech. It was not news then.
And it's not news now, for as long as there have been words they have mattered.
What matters most about words today is that, in politics, they are losing their core meanings as doublespeak spreads.
When a Senator says that the federal debt is "unsustainable," that doesn't mean the peak of debt has been reached. It means the debt will grow higher, until Arithmetic, the ultimate Black Swan, says it can't be sustained.
When a State Department official says that another country's behavior is "unacceptable," that doesn't mean it won't be accepted. It means it will be accepted, because there is no perceived option.
When the word "period" is spoken at the end of a declarative sentence it doesn't mean "no ifs, ands, or buts about it." It's just an emphatic, verbal punctuation mark used to sell a lie.
When the President says that "all economists agree," that doesn't mean they all agree. All economics can't agree on much of anything, for where two or more economists are gathered together opinions will outnumber headcount. Those words aim to discount economists who disagree with the Regime.
When an official of the Environmental Protection Agency calls manmade global warming "settled science," it means not all climatologists agree, just the ones who get government grants.
HANSON: Illegal immigration "the reason California is destroyed" and the "path to Armageddon" for the U.S.
Or that 40 percent of California's children aren't fluent in English?
Or that 44 percent of incoming freshmen into the California state university system need help with remedial English and math?
Furthermore, "it is forbidden to notice that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between illegal immigration and these woes."
On January 30, 2014, historian Victor Davis Hanson visited the Mark Levin Show (click here to open a new tab and listen to the podcast) and offered the most succinct, powerful and ominous summary of illegal immigration that I've ever heard.
The American Thinker's John Bennett captured the salient points and they are shocking.
America could be on "a path to Armageddon," given the blend of relativism, racial preferences, and nullified immigration laws...
Hanson pointed out that many of today's immigrants are not repeating the pattern of the Italians or Greeks, as just two examples. While Latino studies programs can be found at almost all universities, one does not find such "studies" for Italians or Greeks. That is just one dramatic distinction between immigrants today and past immigrants.
...Instead of amnesty, the Republicans should be pushing for limits on immigration. Hanson suggests that we can take 100,000 legal immigrants per year, but we can't take one million per year, especially when they lack high school diplomas or English proficiency.
...A Californian, Hanson has seen firsthand the fiscal, social, and educational problems stemming from illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is "the reason the state is destroyed," Hanson bluntly stated...
California, as a state, serves as the shining example of what happens under lax enforcement of immigration laws. The state is going bankrupt. The Republican Party is going extinct. At their lowest level of registration since 1922, Republicans are 29% of registered voters in California, while Democrats are 44%. In the face of population changes of the type that have occurred, the Republicans can't modify, they can't adjust, they can only die out.
...conservative voters understand that "blanket amnesties" are "going to unravel the American experiment and its also going to empower the Democratic Party for 40 years."
Besides, any Republican effort to pander can be easily outdone by the Democrats. "Trying to outrace and outclass and outgender the Democratic Party is a losing proposition."
While they pander, the Republicans would be losing a core group of voters who do actually support them in large numbers. "Why is this leadership deliberately trying to estrange and alienate 70% of the people who will go out and vote?" Hanson asked.
...Hanson concluded by describing the "postmodern relativism" inherent in local efforts to nullify immigration law, efforts driven by racial pandering.
There are "sanctuary cities" that forbid local law enforcement from asking about immigration status or engaging with federal authorities. Hanson urged that Republicans should be seizing on this "nullification" of federal law, to illustrate the left's hypocrisy and recklessness. Even convicted violent felons have been harbored by cities like San Francisco, where one violent felon who should have been deported went on to murder a father and two of his sons.
Illegal immigration not only promotes anarchy, it endorses Balkanization and conflict.
Legal immigration encourages assimilation, the advancement of the civil society, and a harmonious respect for the written law.
The Republicans who push amnesty are encouraging suicide of their party -- and America as a Consitutional republic.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
EPAM says it has no ties between Healthcare.gov and references to HHS refer to a different system
A week ago, Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon reported that U.S. intelligence officials had uncovered evidence that the troubled Healthcare.gov site was developed, in part, by a firm based in Belarus.
U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised.
The firm, called EPAM, has offices around the world, but is headquartered in Belarus.
Officials disclosed the software compromise last week after the discovery in early January of statements by Belarusian official Valery Tsepkalo, director of the government-backed High-Technology Park (HTP) in Minsk.
Tsepkalo told a Russian radio station in an interview broadcast last summer that HHS is “one of our clients,” and that “we are helping Obama complete his insurance reform.”
“Our programmers wrote the program that appears on the monitors in all hospitals and all insurance companies—they will see the full profile of the given patient,” Tsepkalo said June 25 on Voice of Russia Radio.
A week later, the intelligence report had been "recalled" and the Obama administration issued denials that a Belarusian firm had been involved in development of the website.
...The recall of the intelligence report, which was produced by the CIA-based Open Source Center, has raised questions about the politicization of intelligence—the suppression or skewing of intelligence to conform to policy prescriptions.
DNI spokesman Shawn Turner, in a statement, denied that the withdrawal of the report was based on political motives... Turner said the Open Source Center circulated its report on Obamacare software Jan. 29 under the title “United States’ Affordable Care Act Software – Cyber Attack Target.” ... According to Turner, the report was not reviewed by intelligence experts and did not meet “tradecraft standards,” including certain pre-publication reviews.
HHS, its Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that helped set up the system, and CGI Federal so far have declined to provide details on [all of the] contractors involved in Healthcare.gov.
...The fears of cyber attack are compounded by the anti-U.S. stance of the Minsk government and an incident in February 2013 when large amounts of U.S. Internet data were hijacked and rerouted to Belarus where it was sifted for intelligence.
For those who speak Russian, you can find the complete 40-minute interview with Mr. Tsepkalo here. During the interview, Mr. Tsepkalo proudly names the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a key customer, adding he's helping Obama to reform American healthcare.
Answering the interviewer's question, he further adds, the money is very, very good (while smirking). At around 16:00, Mr. Tsepkalo also names some of his other U.S. customers. Among them are CitiBank and a new customer for him, NYSE.
So, let's summarize what we have learned. CGI Federal had allegedly subcontracted part of the software development to a Belorussian company called EPAM, which is a part of Belorussian High Technology Park, which is run by Lukashenko's advisor and former Belorussian Ambassador to the United States, Tsepkalo.
Is there any independent confirmation of ties between EPAM and HHS?
Possibly. Around the time that Healthcare.gov was being unveiled a software developer, who attempted to keep his name hidden, asked a series of technical questions on a popular software site called StackOverflow. Using the alias "gstackoverflow2", the developer visited a variety of such sites and posted questions regarding testing procedures for a Java framework.
Coincidence 1. The software deployment mentioned in the questions specifies both EPAM and HHS:
Coincidence 2. Though the user asks questions in -- and much of the code is written in -- English, the user's real name may have been inadvertently exposed in the files he uploaded to ask questions.
Nikolay Tkachev appears to be the name of someone of Ukrainian or Belorussian descent.
Coincidence 3. The timing of the questions corresponds to a great deal of rushed work before, during and after the horrific launch of Healthcare.gov.
To be fair to EPAM, it has officially denied any involvement with HHS, despite the claims in Belarus.
EPAM Systems, Inc., releases an official statement, that contrary to recent online blog posts issued by various outlets, EPAM has never been involved in software development for the Healthcare.gov website or any Affordable Care Act related engagements. Any claims to the contrary are completely false.
However, that statement came before these particular leads were uncovered.
Therefore, I will formally submit the following questions to EPAM and HHS:
1. Did someone named "Nikolay Tkachev" and/or someone employing the alias gstackoverflow2 on the aforementioned websites ever work for EPAM?
2. If so, did the individual(s) work on any software for the Department of Health and Human Services, state exchanges, or other systems or platforms related to Obamacare?
3. If not, what do the modules marked epam.hhs represent? Who is the customer?
I'll be sending these to EPAM for their review and will let you know what I hear.
Update I: Received the following from EPAM:
..EPAM is a highly regarded U.S. publicly traded company, headquartered in Pennsylvania with highly skilled technical resources in the United States and around the globe. EPAM has a long history of quality software engineering and IT services capabilities. EPAM stands by its previous statement-- that the company is not now and has never been involved in software development for the Healthcare.gov website. Any claim to the contrary is completely false. The report appearing at your post incorrectly associates a simple folder name and references to “hhsystems.” To be clear, these references on the postings relate to an internal training project called “Head Hunter Systems”, and are unrelated to any customer engagements or the healthcare industry.
Regards,
Ginger Mosier
V.P, General Counsel & Secretary
Consider the record corrected.
Sunday, February 09, 2014
GOOD NEWS: Obama "Executive Action" Eases Immigration Restrictions on Terrorists
No, now Islamists who support terror are welcome, too. Which is pretty much the Wall Street Journal position on immigration.
The Obama administration has eased the rules for would-be asylum-seekers, refugees and others who hope to come to the United States or stay here and who gave "limited" support to terrorists or terrorist groups... The change is one of President Barack Obama's first actions on immigration since he pledged during his State of the Union address last month to use more executive directives...
The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department now say that people considered to have provided "limited material support" to terrorists or terrorist groups are no longer automatically barred from the United States.
...Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the change naive given today's global terrorist threats... "President Obama should be protecting U.S. citizens rather than taking a chance on those who are aiding and abetting terrorist activity and putting Americans at greater risk," said Goodlatte, R-Va.
As an up-and-coming politician, Mr. Obama feted terrorists and marinated in anti-semitism.
Which makes this unlawful "executive action" on the part of the president all the less surprising.
And when innocent Americans die -- and they will -- remember who Obama is and what his administration did.
Hat tips: Dan from New York and BadBlue News.
Just when you think the Washington Post has hit rock bottom, they sink deeper into the tar-pit
And guess what? The execrable Washington Post and someone named "Sandhya Somashekhar" -- which I'm pretty sure is pronounced "Gesundheit!" -- found someone delighted that they can quit their job. You know, to "escape job lock", which is the new term for Obamacare-induced unemployment.
Count Polly Lower among those who quit their jobs because of the health-care law... It happened in September, when her boss abruptly changed her job description. She went from doing payroll, which she liked, to working on her boss’s schedule, which she loathed...
Hold up: Polly had to work on her boss's schedule? Oh, the humanity!
At another time, she might have had to grit her teeth and accept the new position because she needed the health benefits... But with the health-care law soon to take effect, she simply resigned — and hasn’t looked back.
“It was wonderful. It was very freeing,” said Lower, 56, of Bourbon, Ind...
Yes, isn't being jobless an aspirational goal for everyone? You know, so they can pursue their goals, like writing cowboy poetry or weaving risque macrame.
...[Lower] is now babysitting her 5-year-old granddaughter full time. With the help of federal subsidies that kicked in Jan. 1, she is paying less than $500 a month for health coverage for herself and her husband.
So let's state this more clearly: thanks to Obamacare, Lower has now joined the roughly 100 million Americans collecting an average of $9,000 each from more than 80 means-tested welfare programs.
The Washington Post found ... Lower through Families USA, a health advocacy group that supports the health-care law and maintains a database of people who have benefited from it.
And just who is Families USA? They're an SEIU front group that has been pushing for socialized medicine for years.In short, the Washington Post is doing its level best to protect Democrats as we head into the 2014 midterm elections even as millions lose their jobs and their health care; and as many as 100 million more may be similarly impacted in 2015, unless the Imperial President rewrites the Obamacare law again through executive edict.
And where does "Sandhya Somashekhar" and the Washington Post find their loathsome propaganda? Why a hardcore, militant labor union aligned with the Marxist-Leninist movement, of course!
Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production. Our immediate task is to limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace…In the short run we must at least minimize the degree of exploitation of workers by capitalists. We can accomplish this by promoting full employment policies, passing local living wage laws, but most of all by increasing the union movement’s power…
I'll let Jonah Goldberg dispense with Gesundheit and her Marxist propaganda in his usual, incisive fashion.
...the real CBO story should be: “That awkward moment when everyone realizes Obamacare was a huge mistake.” The same CBO report projects that by 2024 the number of non-elderly uninsured will be — drum roll, please — 31 million Americans.
And that’s why all of this talk of Democrats as the Job-Lock Liberators is pathetic and hilarious at the same time. Virtually every promise has been broken, every prediction falsified. And now, at a time when millions want work that doesn’t exist, Democrats are claiming victory by trimming the amount of work actually being done.
Hopefully voters will look for ways to liberate these Democrats from the curse of job-lock come November.
The title of the WaPo secretion is "They quit their jobs, thanks to health-care law."
I don't think that headline means what they think it means.
Hat tip: BadBlue News
The 4 Pillars of Poverty
I think it is remarkable that, despite the growth the US has enjoyed since the 1960s, the poverty rate has barely changed. Writing for the Wall Street Journal last month under the title “How the War on Poverty Was Lost”, Robert Rector notes that: “Fifty years and $20 trillion later, LBJ’s goal to help the poor become self-supporting has failed.” He writes further:
My impression is that there are far more “poor” people today as a percentage of the population than there were in the 1960s, because lower middle-class and middle-class people have moved into the ranks of the poor. (Since 2007, the bottom 50% by wealth percentile lost more than 40% of their net worth and their debts are up 16%.) This may be a factor that explains the still muted consumer confidence at a time when stock investors’ sentiment is at its highest level since 1987.
On Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his State of the Union address to announce an ambitious government undertaking. “This administration today, here and now,” he thundered, “declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”
Fifty years later, we’re losing that war. Fifteen percent of Americans still live in poverty, according to the official census poverty report for 2012, unchanged since the mid-1960s. Liberals argue that we aren’t spending enough money on poverty-fighting programs, but that’s not the problem. In reality, we’re losing the war on poverty because we have forgotten the original goal, as LBJ stated it half a century ago: “to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities.”
…LBJ promised that the war on poverty would be an “investment” that would “return its cost manifold to the entire economy.” But the country has invested $20.7 trillion in 2011 dollars over the past 50 years. What does America have to show for its investment? Apparently, almost nothing: The official poverty rate persists with little improvement.
In my opinion, the increase in poverty rests on four pillars: cultural and social factors, educational issues, excessive debt, and government handouts, which encourage people not to work. Other factors include: international competition, which keeps wages down; and monetary policies, which create bubbles and impoverish the majority.
As an example, social factors and government handouts led to a sharp increase in out-of-wedlock births. In the 1960s in the US, out-of-wedlock births comprised only 5.3% of total births; in 1980, 18.4%; and today, over 40%. Babies born out of wedlock are likely to have fewer educational opportunities than those raised in two-parent families.
This is one reason; educational standards have also slipped – certainly relative to the rest of the world – due to poor policies. Of course, by far the worst cause of rising poverty rates is monetary policies that have encouraged credit growth, enslaving poor people with debts and financing an increase in entitlement programs by the government.
According to Rector, “The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Government spent $916 billion on these programs in 2012 alone, and roughly 100 million Americans received aid from at least one of them, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. (That figure doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare benefits.) Federal and state welfare spending, adjusted for inflation, is 16 times greater than it was in 1964. If converted to cash, current means tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all official poverty in the U.S.”
"The Affordable Care Act is leaving my children uninsured – so how can this law have the word Care in it?"
The Affordable Care Act is leaving my children uninsured as of January – so how can this law have the word Care in it?
An Open Letter to the Obama Administration and American Citizens:
My family’s journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us. We are a family of four, with two little boys’ ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years. We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us.
On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband. So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us. This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month. I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this. Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly. I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kid’s college, our retirement, etc. I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month – how in the world could this help the economy too?
Saturday, February 08, 2014
MUST SEE: Powerful and frightening testimony on Obama intimidation
I am proud to call Catherine Engelbrecht, President of True the Vote, (www.truethevote.org), a friend. I have written about their amazing organization and its singular achievements in exposing vote fraud a number of times. For example, here, during the Wisconsin recall of Governor Scott Walker, and here, in a widely-read research report on vote fraud for Accuracy in Media. The following testimony, which she delivered this past week before Congress, was at once incredibly inspiring for her singular bravery, and frightening, because it poignantly reveals the depth of the Obama administration’s utter contempt for the American people and the laws governed by it.
Catherine, her husband, their company and her nonprofit, have been repeatedly targeted, first in frivolous lawsuits by the Texas Democratic Party (which the Democrats lost, every single one, but they didn’t care, because it cost about $1 million for Catherine to defend – money fortunately provided by others as they are not rich), then outrageous, unprecedented demands from the FBI, the IRS and the ATF. Watch her testimony and share it.
This administration is literally revealing itself to be a tyranny. We all need to wake up before it is too late if it is indeed not too late already. The IRS has now proposed a new regulation that can only be described as a despotic attempt to throttle free speech. If codified, this rule will make legal, the criminal suppression of conservative groups that they have been engaging in since 2010, and continue to engage in. Add your comments to the chorus of outrage rising across the land against this IRS proposed rule that will literally destroy free speech. Submissions may be sent electronically via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov, please include this citation: IRS REG-134417-13.
























