Wednesday, November 17, 2010
A NOTE FROM REV. LONDA
There hasn't been much news out there. Plus, I've been ill & I need to get back into this blog for God.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
FROM HERITAGE
Heritage Action Urges GOP Senators to Support Earmark Ban
Londa,
Last week, Americans told Washington that they are tired of business as usual. One of the biggest issues in the election was our government's inability to control its spending appetite. The earmarking process is a prime example of this spending problem.
On Tuesday, newly elected and returning Republican Senators will debate and adopt internal conference rules, which will guide their caucus throughout the 112th Congress. They must embrace this opportunity if they are to demonstrate their commitment to changing Washington. Republicans Senators should adopt a two-year moratorium on earmarks.
Across the country, thousands of activists like you are calling their Republican Senators and Senators-elect to urge them to support the earmarks moratorium. If you have friends in states with Republican Senators, urge them to make the call.
Senators have the chance to start changing the way they do business and prove they understood the message you sent on election day. Stay tuned to Heritage Action for the latest on this fight to ban earmarks in the US Senate.
Sincerely,
Michael A. Needham
Chief Executive Officer
Heritage Action for America
Londa,
Last week, Americans told Washington that they are tired of business as usual. One of the biggest issues in the election was our government's inability to control its spending appetite. The earmarking process is a prime example of this spending problem.
On Tuesday, newly elected and returning Republican Senators will debate and adopt internal conference rules, which will guide their caucus throughout the 112th Congress. They must embrace this opportunity if they are to demonstrate their commitment to changing Washington. Republicans Senators should adopt a two-year moratorium on earmarks.
Across the country, thousands of activists like you are calling their Republican Senators and Senators-elect to urge them to support the earmarks moratorium. If you have friends in states with Republican Senators, urge them to make the call.
Senators have the chance to start changing the way they do business and prove they understood the message you sent on election day. Stay tuned to Heritage Action for the latest on this fight to ban earmarks in the US Senate.
Sincerely,
Michael A. Needham
Chief Executive Officer
Heritage Action for America
Friday, November 12, 2010
FROM PATRIOT POST
The Foundation
"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt." --George Washington
Government & PoliticsDebt Commission Floats Some Ideas
The federal budgetBarack Obama's 18-member bipartisan deficit commission is expected to release its full report on the nation's fiscal nightmare by Dec. 1. The commission is tasked with reducing -- or at least advising Congress and the White House on how to reduce -- Obama's disastrous deficits from the current 8.9 percent of GDP to just 3 percent by 2015. The commission is the president's way of appearing to be serious about cutting federal spending, while maybe getting Republicans to agree to raise taxes while he's at it.
This week, commission members began leaking ideas. First, apparently thinking that voters were just kidding in their decisive demand that Congress control spending and cut taxes, Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and George Voinovich (RINO-OH) urged Congress to raise gas taxes by 25 cents per gallon in order to -- get this -- increase spending on infrastructure. Carper and Voinovich say that 10 cents of the tax hike should go to deficit reduction and the remainder to transportation funding to repair bridges and roads. Voinovich claims the new revenue would create 775,000 new jobs. Ah, yes, economic growth and recovery through tax hikes -- we've seen how well that works.
Following that, Chairman Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff, and former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the co-chairman, released their own preliminary report on Wednesday in which they sided, at least in part, with the tax-and-spenders by suggesting a 15-cent spike in the gas tax, part of $751 billion in total tax hikes over 10 years. The pair recommends that tax revenue level out at 21 percent of GDP, which is much higher than the historic average of 18 percent.
The proposal also includes eliminating the child tax credit and the mortgage interest deduction, while significantly reducing overall tax rates. For example, the top rate of 35 percent would fall to 24 percent, with just two lower rates of 15 and 9 percent. The corporate tax rate would be cut from 35 percent to 26 percent, which would finally be competitive with the rest of the world.
Bowles and Simpson offered ideas to cut nearly $4 trillion from the federal budget by 2020. That's a good start, but it's not nearly enough. If their measures are followed -- a big "if" -- the deficit would drop to 2.2 percent of GDP, which ends up leaving them some wiggle room to reach their mandate. Their ideas include cuts to Social Security and Medicare, two of the largest budget allocations; $410 billion in cuts to discretionary spending by 2015; a three-year pay freeze for most federal employees, on top of a 10 percent cut in the total federal workforce; and eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
"We'll both be in a witness protection program when this is all over, so look us up," quipped Simpson. Both are quick to admit that the proposal would likely be a nonstarter in Congress. With a no-holds-barred approach to so many sacred cows, it's easy to see why. First, 14 of the 18 commission members must agree on a final report -- and that's the easy part. Then Congress has to make the hard choices, which, if history is any guide, members will avoid like the plague.
Quote of the Week
"The deficit commission appears to have adopted the flawed notion that taxes and revenues are a zero-sum game -- that tax increases produce higher revenues, when more often the opposite is true. For example, does anyone doubt that the commission's proposal to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction would detrimentally impact the housing (and possibly financial) market? Equally important, how can this commission be taken seriously if it sanctions Obamacare, which not only is wildly unpopular with the American people but also greatly burdens the federal fiscal equation? Many are praising the commission's 'boldness' in proposing to reduce the growth of the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion by 2020 from its projected growth of $7.7 trillion. That's like an alcoholic promising to cut down his liquor consumption from two bottles of bourbon a day to one. Obama, who initiated (and stacked) this commission as an Alinskyite strategy to turn the tables on Republicans on the spending issue, must be laughing all the way to the statist bank." --columnist David Limbaugh
On Cross-Examination
"[I]t's important to understand why we have had deficits of 10% and 8.9% of GDP for the past two years, with another 10% or so anticipated in fiscal 2011. The most important reason is the burst of spending from the 111th Congress that has taken federal outlays as a share of GDP to 25% in 2009, 23.8% in 2010 and back to an estimated 25% in 2011. This is unheard of in the modern era, when the average has been under 21%." --The Wall Street Journal
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"If people are, in fact, concerned about spending, debt, deficits and the future of our country, then they're going to need to be armed with the information about the kinds of choices that are going to be involved, and we can't just engage in political rhetoric." --Barack Obama, engaging almost exclusively in political rhetoric
We Need Your Help
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." --Thomas Paine
Fellow Patriots, our 2010 Annual Fund campaign is underway. As you know, The Patriot Post is not sustained by any political, special interest or parent organization. Nor do we accept any online or e-mail advertising. Our operations and mission are funded by -- and depend entirely upon -- the voluntary financial support of American Patriots like YOU!
Like many mission-based organizations, we raise most of our budget in the last two months of each year. We still must raise approximately $275,000 before year's end.
Fellow Patriots, Please Support Our 2010 Year-End Campaign
Donate Online
Donate by Mail
"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt." --George Washington
Government & PoliticsDebt Commission Floats Some Ideas
The federal budgetBarack Obama's 18-member bipartisan deficit commission is expected to release its full report on the nation's fiscal nightmare by Dec. 1. The commission is tasked with reducing -- or at least advising Congress and the White House on how to reduce -- Obama's disastrous deficits from the current 8.9 percent of GDP to just 3 percent by 2015. The commission is the president's way of appearing to be serious about cutting federal spending, while maybe getting Republicans to agree to raise taxes while he's at it.
This week, commission members began leaking ideas. First, apparently thinking that voters were just kidding in their decisive demand that Congress control spending and cut taxes, Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and George Voinovich (RINO-OH) urged Congress to raise gas taxes by 25 cents per gallon in order to -- get this -- increase spending on infrastructure. Carper and Voinovich say that 10 cents of the tax hike should go to deficit reduction and the remainder to transportation funding to repair bridges and roads. Voinovich claims the new revenue would create 775,000 new jobs. Ah, yes, economic growth and recovery through tax hikes -- we've seen how well that works.
Following that, Chairman Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff, and former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the co-chairman, released their own preliminary report on Wednesday in which they sided, at least in part, with the tax-and-spenders by suggesting a 15-cent spike in the gas tax, part of $751 billion in total tax hikes over 10 years. The pair recommends that tax revenue level out at 21 percent of GDP, which is much higher than the historic average of 18 percent.
The proposal also includes eliminating the child tax credit and the mortgage interest deduction, while significantly reducing overall tax rates. For example, the top rate of 35 percent would fall to 24 percent, with just two lower rates of 15 and 9 percent. The corporate tax rate would be cut from 35 percent to 26 percent, which would finally be competitive with the rest of the world.
Bowles and Simpson offered ideas to cut nearly $4 trillion from the federal budget by 2020. That's a good start, but it's not nearly enough. If their measures are followed -- a big "if" -- the deficit would drop to 2.2 percent of GDP, which ends up leaving them some wiggle room to reach their mandate. Their ideas include cuts to Social Security and Medicare, two of the largest budget allocations; $410 billion in cuts to discretionary spending by 2015; a three-year pay freeze for most federal employees, on top of a 10 percent cut in the total federal workforce; and eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
"We'll both be in a witness protection program when this is all over, so look us up," quipped Simpson. Both are quick to admit that the proposal would likely be a nonstarter in Congress. With a no-holds-barred approach to so many sacred cows, it's easy to see why. First, 14 of the 18 commission members must agree on a final report -- and that's the easy part. Then Congress has to make the hard choices, which, if history is any guide, members will avoid like the plague.
Quote of the Week
"The deficit commission appears to have adopted the flawed notion that taxes and revenues are a zero-sum game -- that tax increases produce higher revenues, when more often the opposite is true. For example, does anyone doubt that the commission's proposal to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction would detrimentally impact the housing (and possibly financial) market? Equally important, how can this commission be taken seriously if it sanctions Obamacare, which not only is wildly unpopular with the American people but also greatly burdens the federal fiscal equation? Many are praising the commission's 'boldness' in proposing to reduce the growth of the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion by 2020 from its projected growth of $7.7 trillion. That's like an alcoholic promising to cut down his liquor consumption from two bottles of bourbon a day to one. Obama, who initiated (and stacked) this commission as an Alinskyite strategy to turn the tables on Republicans on the spending issue, must be laughing all the way to the statist bank." --columnist David Limbaugh
On Cross-Examination
"[I]t's important to understand why we have had deficits of 10% and 8.9% of GDP for the past two years, with another 10% or so anticipated in fiscal 2011. The most important reason is the burst of spending from the 111th Congress that has taken federal outlays as a share of GDP to 25% in 2009, 23.8% in 2010 and back to an estimated 25% in 2011. This is unheard of in the modern era, when the average has been under 21%." --The Wall Street Journal
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"If people are, in fact, concerned about spending, debt, deficits and the future of our country, then they're going to need to be armed with the information about the kinds of choices that are going to be involved, and we can't just engage in political rhetoric." --Barack Obama, engaging almost exclusively in political rhetoric
We Need Your Help
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." --Thomas Paine
Fellow Patriots, our 2010 Annual Fund campaign is underway. As you know, The Patriot Post is not sustained by any political, special interest or parent organization. Nor do we accept any online or e-mail advertising. Our operations and mission are funded by -- and depend entirely upon -- the voluntary financial support of American Patriots like YOU!
Like many mission-based organizations, we raise most of our budget in the last two months of each year. We still must raise approximately $275,000 before year's end.
Fellow Patriots, Please Support Our 2010 Year-End Campaign
Donate Online
Donate by Mail
FROM TOWNHALL
Don't Be Taken In by the Deficit Commission
Email David Limbaugh
Columnist's Archive Share Buzz 0diggsdigg
Sign-Up If preliminary rumblings from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's upcoming report are accurate, I'm afraid the conservative agenda -- though overwhelmingly victorious in last week's elections -- might be against the ropes again, especially with GOP congressmen praising the report.
Our astronomical deficits are the result not of low taxes, but of profligate spending. So why do we accept the premise that the starting point for deficit and debt reduction discussions must be various tax hikes, tolerating unacceptably high levels of spending, and seeming to take off the table the eradication of programs the government was never intended or constitutionally authorized to establish in the first place?
The deficit commission appears to have adopted the flawed notion that taxes and revenues are a zero-sum game -- that tax increases produce higher revenues, when more often the opposite is true. For example, does anyone doubt that the commission's proposal to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction would detrimentally impact the housing (and possibly financial) market?
Equally important, how can this commission be taken seriously if it sanctions Obamacare, which not only is wildly unpopular with the American people but also greatly burdens the federal fiscal equation?
Many are praising the commission's "boldness" in proposing to reduce the growth of the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion by 2020 from its projected growth of $7.7 trillion. That's like an alcoholic promising to cut down his liquor consumption from two bottles of bourbon a day to one. Obama, who initiated (and stacked) this commission as an Alinskyite strategy to turn the tables on Republicans on the spending issue, must be laughing all the way to the statist bank.
Do you realize that just three years ago -- 2007 -- our federal budget deficit was just $161 billion? So why are we congratulating ourselves as prudent stewards of our grandchildren's money for planning half-trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see? Besides, no one can honestly believe these reduction projections are realistic. One thing you can bank on is that government-spending projections are always understated.
Without doubt, there will be the inevitable upward pressure on deficits and debt from the increased interest on the debt as a result of Obama's reckless spending orgy. But that's hardly the only explanation for the nearly exponential increases in the projected growth of the deficit.
If we are going to be serious about tackling this fiscal crisis, which threatens the long-term survival of the republic, at some point we're going to have to have a debate on the ever-expanding dependency cycle to which we've addicted ourselves. If the elections told us anything, it was that people want this nation to radically reverse its current fiscal course. Nibbling around the edges is neither what the people have demanded nor what will alleviate our problems.
Those who think Obama is completely incompetent ought to reconsider. The one thing he's not incompetent at is getting his way -- shoving his agenda down our throats. There was a method to Obama's madness in shoving Obamacare through, folding new spending programs into his "stimulus" bill that will persist in perpetuity, and otherwise reversing welfare reform en route to re-expanding the welfare state. He knew that no matter how much the public objected, it would be very hard to roll back his new initiatives once in place and that he would be establishing a new set point from which any debate on spending and taxes would have to begin.
We don't have to accept this state of affairs as the inevitable status quo, and we shouldn't give too much credence to a deficit commission that accepts, apparently without much question, that Obamacare is here to stay. Nor should we casually swallow the commission's implied message that we will be fiscal heroes if we merely aspire to roll back federal spending to 22 percent -- and later 21 percent -- of gross domestic product. A few short years ago, such spending levels would have been met with uniform horror by all but the most brainwashed Marxists. As Steve Manacek wrote at Ricochet.com, such excessive spending levels have been relatively rare in our history. Yet we now have a commission whose charter purpose is to reduce the deficit advocating these levels as just a starting point? Can you imagine what the ending point would be?
Sanguine reactions to the commission's tax-related solutions are equally suspect. It recommends capping revenues at 21 percent of GDP, as if that is Grover Norquist's dream. But Manacek points out that federal revenues have never reached 21 percent of GDP, so there is nothing comforting here for those who recognize excessive taxes as enemies of freedom and economic growth.
It's not that there aren't attractive features in the preliminary commission reports. But to paraphrase Obama, conservatives just "won," and they mustn't accede to Obama's misguided approach to deficit reduction.
David Limbaugh
David Limbaugh, brother of radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, is an expert in law and politics and author of new book Crimes Against Liberty, the definitive chronicle of Barack Obama's devastating term in office so far.
Email David Limbaugh
Columnist's Archive Share Buzz 0diggsdigg
Sign-Up If preliminary rumblings from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's upcoming report are accurate, I'm afraid the conservative agenda -- though overwhelmingly victorious in last week's elections -- might be against the ropes again, especially with GOP congressmen praising the report.
Our astronomical deficits are the result not of low taxes, but of profligate spending. So why do we accept the premise that the starting point for deficit and debt reduction discussions must be various tax hikes, tolerating unacceptably high levels of spending, and seeming to take off the table the eradication of programs the government was never intended or constitutionally authorized to establish in the first place?
The deficit commission appears to have adopted the flawed notion that taxes and revenues are a zero-sum game -- that tax increases produce higher revenues, when more often the opposite is true. For example, does anyone doubt that the commission's proposal to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction would detrimentally impact the housing (and possibly financial) market?
Equally important, how can this commission be taken seriously if it sanctions Obamacare, which not only is wildly unpopular with the American people but also greatly burdens the federal fiscal equation?
Many are praising the commission's "boldness" in proposing to reduce the growth of the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion by 2020 from its projected growth of $7.7 trillion. That's like an alcoholic promising to cut down his liquor consumption from two bottles of bourbon a day to one. Obama, who initiated (and stacked) this commission as an Alinskyite strategy to turn the tables on Republicans on the spending issue, must be laughing all the way to the statist bank.
Do you realize that just three years ago -- 2007 -- our federal budget deficit was just $161 billion? So why are we congratulating ourselves as prudent stewards of our grandchildren's money for planning half-trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see? Besides, no one can honestly believe these reduction projections are realistic. One thing you can bank on is that government-spending projections are always understated.
Without doubt, there will be the inevitable upward pressure on deficits and debt from the increased interest on the debt as a result of Obama's reckless spending orgy. But that's hardly the only explanation for the nearly exponential increases in the projected growth of the deficit.
If we are going to be serious about tackling this fiscal crisis, which threatens the long-term survival of the republic, at some point we're going to have to have a debate on the ever-expanding dependency cycle to which we've addicted ourselves. If the elections told us anything, it was that people want this nation to radically reverse its current fiscal course. Nibbling around the edges is neither what the people have demanded nor what will alleviate our problems.
Those who think Obama is completely incompetent ought to reconsider. The one thing he's not incompetent at is getting his way -- shoving his agenda down our throats. There was a method to Obama's madness in shoving Obamacare through, folding new spending programs into his "stimulus" bill that will persist in perpetuity, and otherwise reversing welfare reform en route to re-expanding the welfare state. He knew that no matter how much the public objected, it would be very hard to roll back his new initiatives once in place and that he would be establishing a new set point from which any debate on spending and taxes would have to begin.
We don't have to accept this state of affairs as the inevitable status quo, and we shouldn't give too much credence to a deficit commission that accepts, apparently without much question, that Obamacare is here to stay. Nor should we casually swallow the commission's implied message that we will be fiscal heroes if we merely aspire to roll back federal spending to 22 percent -- and later 21 percent -- of gross domestic product. A few short years ago, such spending levels would have been met with uniform horror by all but the most brainwashed Marxists. As Steve Manacek wrote at Ricochet.com, such excessive spending levels have been relatively rare in our history. Yet we now have a commission whose charter purpose is to reduce the deficit advocating these levels as just a starting point? Can you imagine what the ending point would be?
Sanguine reactions to the commission's tax-related solutions are equally suspect. It recommends capping revenues at 21 percent of GDP, as if that is Grover Norquist's dream. But Manacek points out that federal revenues have never reached 21 percent of GDP, so there is nothing comforting here for those who recognize excessive taxes as enemies of freedom and economic growth.
It's not that there aren't attractive features in the preliminary commission reports. But to paraphrase Obama, conservatives just "won," and they mustn't accede to Obama's misguided approach to deficit reduction.
David Limbaugh
David Limbaugh, brother of radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, is an expert in law and politics and author of new book Crimes Against Liberty, the definitive chronicle of Barack Obama's devastating term in office so far.
FROM TOWNHALL
The Fed Trashes the Dollar
Email Pat Buchanan
Columnist's Archive Share Buzz 0diggsdigg
Sign-Up If it is the first responsibility of the Federal Reserve to protect the dollars that Americans earn and save, is it not dereliction of duty for the Fed to pursue a policy to bleed value from those dollars? For that is what Chairman Ben Bernanke is up to with his QE2, or "quantitative easing."
Translation: The Fed is committed to buy $600 billion in bonds from banks and pay for them by printing money that will then be deposited in those banks. The more dollars that flood into the economy, the less every one of them is worth.
Bernanke is not just risking inflation. He is inducing inflation.
He is reducing the value of the dollar to make U.S. exports more competitive and imports more expensive, so that we will consume fewer imports. He is trying to eliminate the U.S. trade deficit by treating the once universally respected dollar like the peso of a banana republic.
Sarah Palin has nailed cold what Bernanke is about:
"We shouldn't be playing around with inflation. It's not for nothing Reagan called it 'as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.'
"The Fed's pump-priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed's proposals 'clueless.' When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it's time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist.
"We don't want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings."
Egging Ben on is the Nobel-prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Fed policy is too timid, says Krugman.
When Bernanke said we are not "going to try to raise inflation to a super-normal level," he blew it, says Krugman, and "there goes the best chance the Fed's plan might actually work."
What the Fed should do, he says, is change expectations "by leading people to believe that we will have somewhat above-normal inflation ... which would reduce the incentive to sit on cash."
But "sit on cash" is a definition of saving. Is saving bad? Once, Americans were taught that saving was a good thing.
Not to Krugman. He wants to panic the public into believing the money they have put into savings accounts and CDs will be rapidly eaten up by Fed-created inflation, so they will run out and spend that money now to get the economy moving again.
Whatever the economics of this, the morality of it is appalling.
Imagine a husband and wife with a bright child who are saving to send the boy to the best prep school, then Princeton, then, hopefully, Harvard or Yale Law, so the boy can realize his dream of being a great lawyer and perhaps one day sitting on the Supreme Court.
Krugman is recommending that the Fed goose the money supply to cause a general fear of inflation, so that couple will run and get their money out of the bank and start spending it, because, if they don't, their own government will start destroying the value of their savings.
This is Weimar economics.
As for inflation, are not the prices of gold, silver, oil and other commodities flashing signals that it is on the way?
In denouncing Bernanke, even the Chinese are not all wrong. They have followed the monetary policy we created at Bretton Woods in 1944, where we tied the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce, while other nations tied their currencies to the dollar at fixed rates of exchange.
China is being denounced for manipulating its currency when Beijing is adhering to a strict dollar-renminbi exchange rate, while our Fed is manipulating the dollar price to seek competitive advantage.
The other Chinese complaint is that they lent us trillions to buy Chinese goods and now we are robbing them by depreciating the dollar-denominated Treasury bonds they accepted in return for their goods.
Pay back your banker in Monopoly money, and you will find you are soon unable to borrow from anyone anywhere.
In four years, the American people have delivered three straight votes of no confidence in the U.S. government. The Fed, however, retains a confidence that it does not deserve, when one considers that, when it was created in 1913, a $20 bill could be exchanged for a $20 gold piece.
Today, it takes seventy $20 bills to buy a $20 gold piece, which means the dollar can buy in 2010 what you could get for 2 pennies in 1910. Quite a record for a central bank set up to protect the dollar.
If Bernanke's inflation does not generate growth, confidence in the Fed will also vanish. Then a crisis of capitalism will be at hand.
Historians will not deal kindly with the men who traded the horse of U.S. economic nationalism for the rabbit of the Global Economy.
Pat Buchanan
Pat Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative magazine, and the author of many books including State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America .
Email Pat Buchanan
Columnist's Archive Share Buzz 0diggsdigg
Sign-Up If it is the first responsibility of the Federal Reserve to protect the dollars that Americans earn and save, is it not dereliction of duty for the Fed to pursue a policy to bleed value from those dollars? For that is what Chairman Ben Bernanke is up to with his QE2, or "quantitative easing."
Translation: The Fed is committed to buy $600 billion in bonds from banks and pay for them by printing money that will then be deposited in those banks. The more dollars that flood into the economy, the less every one of them is worth.
Bernanke is not just risking inflation. He is inducing inflation.
He is reducing the value of the dollar to make U.S. exports more competitive and imports more expensive, so that we will consume fewer imports. He is trying to eliminate the U.S. trade deficit by treating the once universally respected dollar like the peso of a banana republic.
Sarah Palin has nailed cold what Bernanke is about:
"We shouldn't be playing around with inflation. It's not for nothing Reagan called it 'as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.'
"The Fed's pump-priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed's proposals 'clueless.' When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it's time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist.
"We don't want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings."
Egging Ben on is the Nobel-prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Fed policy is too timid, says Krugman.
When Bernanke said we are not "going to try to raise inflation to a super-normal level," he blew it, says Krugman, and "there goes the best chance the Fed's plan might actually work."
What the Fed should do, he says, is change expectations "by leading people to believe that we will have somewhat above-normal inflation ... which would reduce the incentive to sit on cash."
But "sit on cash" is a definition of saving. Is saving bad? Once, Americans were taught that saving was a good thing.
Not to Krugman. He wants to panic the public into believing the money they have put into savings accounts and CDs will be rapidly eaten up by Fed-created inflation, so they will run out and spend that money now to get the economy moving again.
Whatever the economics of this, the morality of it is appalling.
Imagine a husband and wife with a bright child who are saving to send the boy to the best prep school, then Princeton, then, hopefully, Harvard or Yale Law, so the boy can realize his dream of being a great lawyer and perhaps one day sitting on the Supreme Court.
Krugman is recommending that the Fed goose the money supply to cause a general fear of inflation, so that couple will run and get their money out of the bank and start spending it, because, if they don't, their own government will start destroying the value of their savings.
This is Weimar economics.
As for inflation, are not the prices of gold, silver, oil and other commodities flashing signals that it is on the way?
In denouncing Bernanke, even the Chinese are not all wrong. They have followed the monetary policy we created at Bretton Woods in 1944, where we tied the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce, while other nations tied their currencies to the dollar at fixed rates of exchange.
China is being denounced for manipulating its currency when Beijing is adhering to a strict dollar-renminbi exchange rate, while our Fed is manipulating the dollar price to seek competitive advantage.
The other Chinese complaint is that they lent us trillions to buy Chinese goods and now we are robbing them by depreciating the dollar-denominated Treasury bonds they accepted in return for their goods.
Pay back your banker in Monopoly money, and you will find you are soon unable to borrow from anyone anywhere.
In four years, the American people have delivered three straight votes of no confidence in the U.S. government. The Fed, however, retains a confidence that it does not deserve, when one considers that, when it was created in 1913, a $20 bill could be exchanged for a $20 gold piece.
Today, it takes seventy $20 bills to buy a $20 gold piece, which means the dollar can buy in 2010 what you could get for 2 pennies in 1910. Quite a record for a central bank set up to protect the dollar.
If Bernanke's inflation does not generate growth, confidence in the Fed will also vanish. Then a crisis of capitalism will be at hand.
Historians will not deal kindly with the men who traded the horse of U.S. economic nationalism for the rabbit of the Global Economy.
Pat Buchanan
Pat Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative magazine, and the author of many books including State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America .
FROM TOWNHALL
The Vast Child-Fattening Conspiracy
Email Brent Bozell
Columnist's Archive Share Buzz 1diggdigg
Sign-Up When it comes to the increasing sex, violence and profanity in entertainment media, the social libertines are indifferent. They insist that children will hardly be warped or ruined by the media they consume. They chortle at the paranoia of Hollywood critics. Their mantra: If you don't like it, just turn the channel.
But if the issue isn't indecency, but instead, say, obesity, so many of those titans of "tolerance" suddenly become the censors. Behold San Francisco, the paradise of permissive sexual attitudes. The city council may welcome flowers in your hair, but they have just voted to ban "Happy Meal" toys unless the "happy" menu is low in fat and sodium, and includes fruits and vegetables.
Apparently, that villain Ronald McDonald has been leading a Vast Child-Fattening Conspiracy.
This is hardly the first step toward dietary dictates in San Francisco. In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom banned city-government use of bottled water, and this past summer, Newsom instituted a ban on sugary sodas in city vending machines. And not just sugary sodas, but sports drinks and even artificially sweetened water. The rule insists juice must be 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners, and machines should allow the choice of soy milk or rice milk.
Then there's the Big Apple, San Francisco's East Coast cousin, another hub of libertine behavior. New York City schools now regulate the types of foods that students may sell for fundraising inside the school: Acceptable products include Fiber One bars, Soy Crisps and Ayala's Herbal Water. To qualify as an approved item, a snack must meet 11 criteria developed by the city. All products must be in marked, single-serving packages with a maximum calorie count of 200. Artificial sweeteners like Splenda are banned. Less than 35 percent of the item's total calories may come from either total sugars or fat. Grain-based products must contain at least 2 grams of fiber.
After resistance to the city's ban on bake sales of homemade goodies, the city relented partially: Parents may sell cupcakes and cookies -- but only once a month, and not in the school cafeteria.
Entire blue states have capitalized on the dietary-puritan wave. In the state of Illinois, the legislature raised taxes last year not only on alcohol, but on candy and soft drinks. The state tax on candy was multiplied by six, from 1 percent to 6.25 percent, unless it needs refrigeration or contains flour. That rate also applies to soda and non-carbonated sweetened drinks, like iced tea. They did it for the children (and, allegedly, for roads and bridges).
What weird people they are. Now their media friends are getting into the act. The same networks that think it's harmless to put orgies into dramas and profanities into sitcoms are utterly panicked about drinking a Pepsi. The Business and Media Institute found CNBC anchor Erin Burnett asking the president of the American Beverage Association why anyone lets Coke or Pepsi be sold. This is what's next? Soda Pop Prohibition?
Burnett demanded to know: "Let me ask you, is there anything good about drinking a full-calorie soda? Why do they even sell it? What's good for me in drinking it?" When she was told it's delicious, Burnett replied sourly: "I'm sure you could say we like cocaine, right?"
So when parents buy their children a Mountain Dew, they might as well be pushing cocaine? All that's missing here for CNBC is the dietary equivalent of documentaries like "Reefer Madness." You don't hear anyone using the mantra that "If you don't like a Pepsi, don't drink one."
In the journal Policy Review last year, Mary Eberstadt tackled the "curious reversal in moralizing" about food and sex: "Modern man (and woman) ... has taken longstanding morality about sex, and substituted it onto food. The all-you-can-eat buffet is now stigmatized; the sexual smorgasbord is not ... According to them, after all, consensual sex is simply what comes naturally, and ought therefore to be judged value-free. But as the contemporary history outlined in this essay goes to show, the same can be said of overeating -- and overeating is something that today's society is manifestly embarked on re-stigmatizing."
The libertines love to mock those anti-Hollywood puritans in Menckenesque tones, suggesting the critics are haunted by the fear that someone somewhere might be happy with their sleazy television. It's now just as easy to say that the big-city food police are haunted by the fear that some child somewhere may be enjoying a Happy Meal, with French fries and "cocaine" on ice.
Brent Bozell
Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.
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Sign-Up When it comes to the increasing sex, violence and profanity in entertainment media, the social libertines are indifferent. They insist that children will hardly be warped or ruined by the media they consume. They chortle at the paranoia of Hollywood critics. Their mantra: If you don't like it, just turn the channel.
But if the issue isn't indecency, but instead, say, obesity, so many of those titans of "tolerance" suddenly become the censors. Behold San Francisco, the paradise of permissive sexual attitudes. The city council may welcome flowers in your hair, but they have just voted to ban "Happy Meal" toys unless the "happy" menu is low in fat and sodium, and includes fruits and vegetables.
Apparently, that villain Ronald McDonald has been leading a Vast Child-Fattening Conspiracy.
This is hardly the first step toward dietary dictates in San Francisco. In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom banned city-government use of bottled water, and this past summer, Newsom instituted a ban on sugary sodas in city vending machines. And not just sugary sodas, but sports drinks and even artificially sweetened water. The rule insists juice must be 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners, and machines should allow the choice of soy milk or rice milk.
Then there's the Big Apple, San Francisco's East Coast cousin, another hub of libertine behavior. New York City schools now regulate the types of foods that students may sell for fundraising inside the school: Acceptable products include Fiber One bars, Soy Crisps and Ayala's Herbal Water. To qualify as an approved item, a snack must meet 11 criteria developed by the city. All products must be in marked, single-serving packages with a maximum calorie count of 200. Artificial sweeteners like Splenda are banned. Less than 35 percent of the item's total calories may come from either total sugars or fat. Grain-based products must contain at least 2 grams of fiber.
After resistance to the city's ban on bake sales of homemade goodies, the city relented partially: Parents may sell cupcakes and cookies -- but only once a month, and not in the school cafeteria.
Entire blue states have capitalized on the dietary-puritan wave. In the state of Illinois, the legislature raised taxes last year not only on alcohol, but on candy and soft drinks. The state tax on candy was multiplied by six, from 1 percent to 6.25 percent, unless it needs refrigeration or contains flour. That rate also applies to soda and non-carbonated sweetened drinks, like iced tea. They did it for the children (and, allegedly, for roads and bridges).
What weird people they are. Now their media friends are getting into the act. The same networks that think it's harmless to put orgies into dramas and profanities into sitcoms are utterly panicked about drinking a Pepsi. The Business and Media Institute found CNBC anchor Erin Burnett asking the president of the American Beverage Association why anyone lets Coke or Pepsi be sold. This is what's next? Soda Pop Prohibition?
Burnett demanded to know: "Let me ask you, is there anything good about drinking a full-calorie soda? Why do they even sell it? What's good for me in drinking it?" When she was told it's delicious, Burnett replied sourly: "I'm sure you could say we like cocaine, right?"
So when parents buy their children a Mountain Dew, they might as well be pushing cocaine? All that's missing here for CNBC is the dietary equivalent of documentaries like "Reefer Madness." You don't hear anyone using the mantra that "If you don't like a Pepsi, don't drink one."
In the journal Policy Review last year, Mary Eberstadt tackled the "curious reversal in moralizing" about food and sex: "Modern man (and woman) ... has taken longstanding morality about sex, and substituted it onto food. The all-you-can-eat buffet is now stigmatized; the sexual smorgasbord is not ... According to them, after all, consensual sex is simply what comes naturally, and ought therefore to be judged value-free. But as the contemporary history outlined in this essay goes to show, the same can be said of overeating -- and overeating is something that today's society is manifestly embarked on re-stigmatizing."
The libertines love to mock those anti-Hollywood puritans in Menckenesque tones, suggesting the critics are haunted by the fear that someone somewhere might be happy with their sleazy television. It's now just as easy to say that the big-city food police are haunted by the fear that some child somewhere may be enjoying a Happy Meal, with French fries and "cocaine" on ice.
Brent Bozell
Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.
FROM TOWNHALL
Throw Carol Browner Under the Bus
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Sign-Up Energy czar Carol Browner needs to go the way of disgraced green jobs czar Van Jones: under the bus and stripped of her unbridled power to destroy jobs and lives in the name of saving the planet. ASAP.
One of the Beltway's most influential, entrenched and unaccountable left-wing radicals, Browner has now been called out twice by President Obama's own federal BP oil spill commission and Interior Department inspector general. How many strikes should a woman who circumvented the Senate confirmation process and boasts a sordid history of abusing public office get?
Pushing the question -- and shining a bright, hot spotlight on Browner's behind-the-scenes maneuvering -- should be a top priority of the new House GOP majority. Not least of all because Washington insiders are still buzzing about possible White House plans to increase her policy role and elevate her status with Team Obama.
First, the BP oil spill panel dinged her for disseminating misleading information to the public about the scope of the disaster. In the aftermath of the spill, she falsely claimed that 75 percent of the spill was "now completely gone from the system" and falsely claimed that the administration's August report on the disaster was "peer-reviewed." The false claim "contributed to public perception" of Browner's calculation as "more exact and complete" than it was ever designed to be, the oil spill commission concluded in October.
This week, the Interior Department inspector general singled out Browner's office for butchering peer-reviewed scientists' conclusions in a key report about the administration's preordained deepwater drilling moratorium. The scientists first blew the whistle on the administration's monkey business this summer. A federal judge sided with the misrepresented scientists and blasted the Interior Department's big green lie that its moratorium was "peer-reviewed" and endorsed by "seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering."
As the court concluded: "Although the experts agreed with the safety recommendations contained in the body of the main Report, five of the National Academy experts and three of the other experts have publicly stated that they 'do not agree with the six month blanket moratorium' on floating drilling."
It was Browner's office behind the hatchet job. After cutting, pasting and tweaking the drilling moratorium report, one of Browner's staff members sent a 2 a.m. e-mail back to the Interior Department on May 27 with edited versions that implied that the outside scientists endorsed the moratorium. The Interior Department inspector general tip-toed around Browner's responsibility for fudging the truth, using passive language to describe how the edited versions "caused the distinction" between what the administration wanted and what the scientists believed "to become effectively lost."
Nonsense. The distinction didn't "become" lost. Browner's office disappeared it, doctored it and obliterated it. Browner's wordsmiths played Mad Libs with the report until it fit their agenda. There was "no intent to mislead the public," Browner's office claims. But this eco-data doctoring fits a long pattern of politicized science over which Browner has presided.
While head of the Clinton administration's EPA, she ordered a staffer to purge and delete her computer files to evade a public disclosure lawsuit. Lambasted by the judge for "contumacious" behavior and contempt of court, Browner claimed it was all an innocent mistake -- and blamed her young son for downloading games on her work computer that she was trying to erase.
During her tenure as EPA chief, she was also caught by a congressional subcommittee using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 grassroots environmental lobbying organizations. Browner exploited her office to orchestrate a political campaign by left-wing groups, who turned around and attacked Republican lawmakers for supporting regulatory reform.
According to the left-leaning Atlantic, Obama has increasingly relied on Browner's counsel on issues beyond her environmental portfolio. Which means he's listening to her advice and strategizing on how to apply her truth-fudging, transparency-evading tactics to the rest of the economy and domestic policy.
Browner, a darling of left-wing billionaire George Soros' environmental justice circles and the wife of a top energy lobbyist, is a dangerous woman whose ideological zeal has helped power the Democrats' war on prosperity. Sunlight, as always, is the best disinfectant -- and a much-needed monkey wrench in the Obama job-killing machine.
Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010).
Email Michelle Malkin
Columnist's Archive Share Buzz 0diggsdigg
Sign-Up Energy czar Carol Browner needs to go the way of disgraced green jobs czar Van Jones: under the bus and stripped of her unbridled power to destroy jobs and lives in the name of saving the planet. ASAP.
One of the Beltway's most influential, entrenched and unaccountable left-wing radicals, Browner has now been called out twice by President Obama's own federal BP oil spill commission and Interior Department inspector general. How many strikes should a woman who circumvented the Senate confirmation process and boasts a sordid history of abusing public office get?
Pushing the question -- and shining a bright, hot spotlight on Browner's behind-the-scenes maneuvering -- should be a top priority of the new House GOP majority. Not least of all because Washington insiders are still buzzing about possible White House plans to increase her policy role and elevate her status with Team Obama.
First, the BP oil spill panel dinged her for disseminating misleading information to the public about the scope of the disaster. In the aftermath of the spill, she falsely claimed that 75 percent of the spill was "now completely gone from the system" and falsely claimed that the administration's August report on the disaster was "peer-reviewed." The false claim "contributed to public perception" of Browner's calculation as "more exact and complete" than it was ever designed to be, the oil spill commission concluded in October.
This week, the Interior Department inspector general singled out Browner's office for butchering peer-reviewed scientists' conclusions in a key report about the administration's preordained deepwater drilling moratorium. The scientists first blew the whistle on the administration's monkey business this summer. A federal judge sided with the misrepresented scientists and blasted the Interior Department's big green lie that its moratorium was "peer-reviewed" and endorsed by "seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering."
As the court concluded: "Although the experts agreed with the safety recommendations contained in the body of the main Report, five of the National Academy experts and three of the other experts have publicly stated that they 'do not agree with the six month blanket moratorium' on floating drilling."
It was Browner's office behind the hatchet job. After cutting, pasting and tweaking the drilling moratorium report, one of Browner's staff members sent a 2 a.m. e-mail back to the Interior Department on May 27 with edited versions that implied that the outside scientists endorsed the moratorium. The Interior Department inspector general tip-toed around Browner's responsibility for fudging the truth, using passive language to describe how the edited versions "caused the distinction" between what the administration wanted and what the scientists believed "to become effectively lost."
Nonsense. The distinction didn't "become" lost. Browner's office disappeared it, doctored it and obliterated it. Browner's wordsmiths played Mad Libs with the report until it fit their agenda. There was "no intent to mislead the public," Browner's office claims. But this eco-data doctoring fits a long pattern of politicized science over which Browner has presided.
While head of the Clinton administration's EPA, she ordered a staffer to purge and delete her computer files to evade a public disclosure lawsuit. Lambasted by the judge for "contumacious" behavior and contempt of court, Browner claimed it was all an innocent mistake -- and blamed her young son for downloading games on her work computer that she was trying to erase.
During her tenure as EPA chief, she was also caught by a congressional subcommittee using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 grassroots environmental lobbying organizations. Browner exploited her office to orchestrate a political campaign by left-wing groups, who turned around and attacked Republican lawmakers for supporting regulatory reform.
According to the left-leaning Atlantic, Obama has increasingly relied on Browner's counsel on issues beyond her environmental portfolio. Which means he's listening to her advice and strategizing on how to apply her truth-fudging, transparency-evading tactics to the rest of the economy and domestic policy.
Browner, a darling of left-wing billionaire George Soros' environmental justice circles and the wife of a top energy lobbyist, is a dangerous woman whose ideological zeal has helped power the Democrats' war on prosperity. Sunlight, as always, is the best disinfectant -- and a much-needed monkey wrench in the Obama job-killing machine.
Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010).
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
FROM AUL
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
This Week's Feature
Lou Anne’s Law Takes Effect
After more than ten years of litigation and desperate obstructionism by Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates, Arizona’s comprehensive abortion clinic regulations went into effect on Monday, November 1. The regulations were first enacted in 1999 following a tragic and preventable death at a Phoenix abortion clinic in which Lou Anne Herron, a 33-year-old mother, died as the result of a late-term abortion. AUL’s Vice President for Legal Affairs, Denise Burke, played a key role in defending this legislation during this ten-year battle.
“This case reveals another dark side of abortion – women’s lives are at stake in under-regulated, under-monitored abortion clinics,” said Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life. “If the abortion industry really cared about women, it would not fight regulations designed to protect a woman’s health.”
Burke added: “Thankfully, Arizona women now have more protection against the substandard conditions and practices at abortion clinics.”
For more information about Lou Anne’s story and the legal maneuverings of Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates during this hard-fought case, check out Burke’s analysis here.
On The Docket
Life Wins: Pro-Life Women Governors now outnumber Pro-Abortion Women Governors
Thanks to the dramatic wins of all four pro-life women gubernatorial candidates in the mid-term elections, pro-life women now outnumber pro-abortion women in the Governors' mansions.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer cruised to re-election victory winning by 13 points. Susana Martinez in New Mexico won decisively by eight points and is the nation’s first female Hispanic governor. Congresswoman Mary Fallin soundly defeated Jari Askins by 20 points. And South Carolina elected Nikki Haley by a four-point margin.
For more information about AUL’s analysis visit here.
A Winning Attorney
AUL is proud to congratulate William Saunders who received the St. Thomas More Award in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday, November 9. This award recognizes an individual who promotes and embodies the virtues of St. Thomas More, as well as inspires lawyers and other professionals to honor God through their work. The award is traditionally given to individuals who have contributed significantly to respect for the dignity of the human person in the field of law.
During the event, Saunders encouraged the attendees with the certainty that pro-life attorneys can further the cause within the legal profession regardless of the specific area of law practiced.
Saunders is following up on that theme by speaking to the law students at Washington University Law School’s Advocates for Life chapter on “Why Roe Must Go (and what happens when it does).”
This Week's Feature
Lou Anne’s Law Takes Effect
After more than ten years of litigation and desperate obstructionism by Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates, Arizona’s comprehensive abortion clinic regulations went into effect on Monday, November 1. The regulations were first enacted in 1999 following a tragic and preventable death at a Phoenix abortion clinic in which Lou Anne Herron, a 33-year-old mother, died as the result of a late-term abortion. AUL’s Vice President for Legal Affairs, Denise Burke, played a key role in defending this legislation during this ten-year battle.
“This case reveals another dark side of abortion – women’s lives are at stake in under-regulated, under-monitored abortion clinics,” said Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life. “If the abortion industry really cared about women, it would not fight regulations designed to protect a woman’s health.”
Burke added: “Thankfully, Arizona women now have more protection against the substandard conditions and practices at abortion clinics.”
For more information about Lou Anne’s story and the legal maneuverings of Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates during this hard-fought case, check out Burke’s analysis here.
On The Docket
Life Wins: Pro-Life Women Governors now outnumber Pro-Abortion Women Governors
Thanks to the dramatic wins of all four pro-life women gubernatorial candidates in the mid-term elections, pro-life women now outnumber pro-abortion women in the Governors' mansions.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer cruised to re-election victory winning by 13 points. Susana Martinez in New Mexico won decisively by eight points and is the nation’s first female Hispanic governor. Congresswoman Mary Fallin soundly defeated Jari Askins by 20 points. And South Carolina elected Nikki Haley by a four-point margin.
For more information about AUL’s analysis visit here.
A Winning Attorney
AUL is proud to congratulate William Saunders who received the St. Thomas More Award in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday, November 9. This award recognizes an individual who promotes and embodies the virtues of St. Thomas More, as well as inspires lawyers and other professionals to honor God through their work. The award is traditionally given to individuals who have contributed significantly to respect for the dignity of the human person in the field of law.
During the event, Saunders encouraged the attendees with the certainty that pro-life attorneys can further the cause within the legal profession regardless of the specific area of law practiced.
Saunders is following up on that theme by speaking to the law students at Washington University Law School’s Advocates for Life chapter on “Why Roe Must Go (and what happens when it does).”
FROM TOWNHALL
Obama's Plan: Trickle Up Poverty
Barack Obama is a serious threat to the American way of life as we now know it. How you may ask? Through the impoverishment of the Middle Class our taxes are going up, health-care has been socialized, and the government is getting more control over our lives. The military is losing funding to pay for horrendous domestic programs while our troops must defend themselves through politically correct Rules of Engagement. New financial regulations are lining the pockets of Obama's campaign contributors while our wages along with stock prices plummet. The border with Mexico is becoming more porous as the Administration continues to neglect illegal immigration.
Bestselling author, conservative icon, and popular radio host Dr. Michael Savage lays it all out on the line in his newest book Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama's Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security. He argues that ignoring the Tea Party is a colossal mistake on the part of Obama, and the will of the people demands a more representative government. We are dangerously close to losing this country unless something is done immediately. If you're concerned with the direction of this country, this is the book for you. Get Townhall Magazine today and receive Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama's Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security by Michael Savage absolutely free!
Barack Obama is a serious threat to the American way of life as we now know it. How you may ask? Through the impoverishment of the Middle Class our taxes are going up, health-care has been socialized, and the government is getting more control over our lives. The military is losing funding to pay for horrendous domestic programs while our troops must defend themselves through politically correct Rules of Engagement. New financial regulations are lining the pockets of Obama's campaign contributors while our wages along with stock prices plummet. The border with Mexico is becoming more porous as the Administration continues to neglect illegal immigration.
Bestselling author, conservative icon, and popular radio host Dr. Michael Savage lays it all out on the line in his newest book Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama's Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security. He argues that ignoring the Tea Party is a colossal mistake on the part of Obama, and the will of the people demands a more representative government. We are dangerously close to losing this country unless something is done immediately. If you're concerned with the direction of this country, this is the book for you. Get Townhall Magazine today and receive Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama's Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security by Michael Savage absolutely free!
FROM TOWNHALL
No Illegal Alien Pilot Left Behind
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Sign-Up Chalk up another Code Red Elmo moment for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. While Islamic terrorists groom suicide bombers starting in kindergarten, the grownups in charge of protecting America can't seem to reach an elementary level of competence.
The "good" news: Hindsight-driven bureaucrats at DHS moved to ban high-risk cargo from Yemen and Somalia this week after a global air scare involving makeshift printer/toner cartridge-bombs. The bad news: More than nine years after the 9/11 jihadist attacks, untold numbers of high-risk flyers have been able to board, ride and pilot American planes -- some with Transportation Security Administration approval to boot.
Outside Boston, one shady flight school provided single-engine pilot lessons to at least 33 illegal immigrants from Brazil. But clear counter-terror rules ban illegal aliens from enrolling in U.S. flight schools. Clear counter-terror regulations require TSA to run foreign flight students' names against a plethora of terrorism, criminal and immigration databases. Head-scratching airport security officials were at a loss last week to explain how dozens of these illegal alien students eluded their radar screen when the agency "performs a thorough background check on each applicant at the time of application" and checks "for available disqualifying immigration information," the Boston Globe reported.
A cluebat for the Keystone Kops: No matter how DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano might spin it, the "system" is not "working" in any sense of either word.
Whistleblowers have warned for years about the gaping holes in both the TSA's and the Federal Aviation Administration's foreign pilot screening systems. In 2005, aviation safety inspector Edward H. Blount of the Alabama Flight Standards District Office sent a letter to the TSA warning of federal policies that were "fostering illegal flight training by foreign individuals" in the U.S. on improper visas. Blount reported that he and another investigator were told by a TSA official that the agency was "not going to look at the visa status" of pilot applicants.
The next year, TSA issued a backside-covering memo shirking responsibility and instead pointing fingers at the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of State for neglecting to follow up on rigorous immigration status checks for foreign pilots.
In 2008, ABC News discovered that thousands of foreign nationals were able to enroll in flight schools despite the strict flight security rules. "Some of the very same conditions that allowed the 9-11 tragedy to happen in the first place are still very much in existence today," one regional TSA officer warned. "TSA's enforcement is basically nonexistent," former FAA inspector Bill McNease told the network. The matter was kicked upstairs to DHS higher-ups in Washington. And there it gathered dust.
Compounding those persistent gaps are the myriad ways the open-borders lobby has undermined secure identification. Homeland security officials were warned years ago about the use of bogus Mexican matricula consular cards by illegal aliens boarding planes. American banks have pandered to the pro-amnesty lobby in search of illegal alien customers; the financial industry championed the use of the matricula consular cards as identification despite widespread fraud, inability to verify validating documents and lack of any central database. Dozens of municipalities have incorporated consular cards as "valid" ID for illegal aliens, and three states still issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Open-borders ideologues populate every corner of the Obama administration, from DHS to the Department of Justice, where civil rights division head Thomas Perez has long crusaded for illegal alien licenses.
These comprehensive failures are partly attributable to incompetence, partly attributable to industry pressure and partly attributable to the intentional undermining of the very immigration laws Congress passed after 9/11 -- laws specifically designed to prevent future alien hijackers like the 9/11 monsters from so easily exploiting the homeland security lapses that allowed them to live and train here for years unencumbered even after their temporary visas had expired.
As I reported in the aftermath of the would-be Christmas Day bomber fiasco last year, data are only as good as the people entrusted to collect, process and use the information to protect national security. Without the ability to share and access the information across numerous agencies, the data are useless. There is still no functional interoperability among an alphabet soup of national security and criminal databases -- including NAILS, TECS, CLASS, VISAS VIPER, TUSCAN, TIPPIX, IBIS, CIS, APIS, SAVE, IDENT, DACS, AFIS, ENFORCE and the NCIC. The Senate raised questions about understaffed efforts to modernize some of these databases last spring. They're still waiting for answers.
As usual, the homeland security moppets under fire stress that they found no links to terrorism among the immigration law-breaking flight students outside Boston. This misses the gobsmackingly obvious point that, despite billions of dollars and years of bureaucratic expansion, our homeland security infrastructure cannot yet provide adequate protection against unauthorized, unscreened, undocumented and unwanted intruders -- terror-related or not. That is not a consolation. That is an indictment.
Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010).
©Creators Syndicate
Email Michelle Malkin
Columnist's Archive Share Buzz 0diggsdigg
Sign-Up Chalk up another Code Red Elmo moment for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. While Islamic terrorists groom suicide bombers starting in kindergarten, the grownups in charge of protecting America can't seem to reach an elementary level of competence.
The "good" news: Hindsight-driven bureaucrats at DHS moved to ban high-risk cargo from Yemen and Somalia this week after a global air scare involving makeshift printer/toner cartridge-bombs. The bad news: More than nine years after the 9/11 jihadist attacks, untold numbers of high-risk flyers have been able to board, ride and pilot American planes -- some with Transportation Security Administration approval to boot.
Outside Boston, one shady flight school provided single-engine pilot lessons to at least 33 illegal immigrants from Brazil. But clear counter-terror rules ban illegal aliens from enrolling in U.S. flight schools. Clear counter-terror regulations require TSA to run foreign flight students' names against a plethora of terrorism, criminal and immigration databases. Head-scratching airport security officials were at a loss last week to explain how dozens of these illegal alien students eluded their radar screen when the agency "performs a thorough background check on each applicant at the time of application" and checks "for available disqualifying immigration information," the Boston Globe reported.
A cluebat for the Keystone Kops: No matter how DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano might spin it, the "system" is not "working" in any sense of either word.
Whistleblowers have warned for years about the gaping holes in both the TSA's and the Federal Aviation Administration's foreign pilot screening systems. In 2005, aviation safety inspector Edward H. Blount of the Alabama Flight Standards District Office sent a letter to the TSA warning of federal policies that were "fostering illegal flight training by foreign individuals" in the U.S. on improper visas. Blount reported that he and another investigator were told by a TSA official that the agency was "not going to look at the visa status" of pilot applicants.
The next year, TSA issued a backside-covering memo shirking responsibility and instead pointing fingers at the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of State for neglecting to follow up on rigorous immigration status checks for foreign pilots.
In 2008, ABC News discovered that thousands of foreign nationals were able to enroll in flight schools despite the strict flight security rules. "Some of the very same conditions that allowed the 9-11 tragedy to happen in the first place are still very much in existence today," one regional TSA officer warned. "TSA's enforcement is basically nonexistent," former FAA inspector Bill McNease told the network. The matter was kicked upstairs to DHS higher-ups in Washington. And there it gathered dust.
Compounding those persistent gaps are the myriad ways the open-borders lobby has undermined secure identification. Homeland security officials were warned years ago about the use of bogus Mexican matricula consular cards by illegal aliens boarding planes. American banks have pandered to the pro-amnesty lobby in search of illegal alien customers; the financial industry championed the use of the matricula consular cards as identification despite widespread fraud, inability to verify validating documents and lack of any central database. Dozens of municipalities have incorporated consular cards as "valid" ID for illegal aliens, and three states still issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Open-borders ideologues populate every corner of the Obama administration, from DHS to the Department of Justice, where civil rights division head Thomas Perez has long crusaded for illegal alien licenses.
These comprehensive failures are partly attributable to incompetence, partly attributable to industry pressure and partly attributable to the intentional undermining of the very immigration laws Congress passed after 9/11 -- laws specifically designed to prevent future alien hijackers like the 9/11 monsters from so easily exploiting the homeland security lapses that allowed them to live and train here for years unencumbered even after their temporary visas had expired.
As I reported in the aftermath of the would-be Christmas Day bomber fiasco last year, data are only as good as the people entrusted to collect, process and use the information to protect national security. Without the ability to share and access the information across numerous agencies, the data are useless. There is still no functional interoperability among an alphabet soup of national security and criminal databases -- including NAILS, TECS, CLASS, VISAS VIPER, TUSCAN, TIPPIX, IBIS, CIS, APIS, SAVE, IDENT, DACS, AFIS, ENFORCE and the NCIC. The Senate raised questions about understaffed efforts to modernize some of these databases last spring. They're still waiting for answers.
As usual, the homeland security moppets under fire stress that they found no links to terrorism among the immigration law-breaking flight students outside Boston. This misses the gobsmackingly obvious point that, despite billions of dollars and years of bureaucratic expansion, our homeland security infrastructure cannot yet provide adequate protection against unauthorized, unscreened, undocumented and unwanted intruders -- terror-related or not. That is not a consolation. That is an indictment.
Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010).
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