Six Things Bernanke is Clueless About by Mike Shedlock
Bernanke's blind faith in empirical formulas over common sense is again in play with his speech today on Recent Developments in the Labor Market.
In any given month, a large number of workers are being hired or are leaving their current jobs, illustrating the dynamism of the U.S. labor market. For example, between 2001 and 2007, private employers hired nearly 5 million people, on average, each month. Total separations, on average, were only slightly smaller. Taking the difference between gross hires and separations, the net monthly change in payrolls during this period was, on average, less than 100,000 jobs per month--a small figure compared to the gross flows.
The recent history of these flows suggests that further improvement in the labor market will likely need to come from a shift to a more robust pace of hiring.
( See Chart on website figure 7 )
The declines in aggregate payrolls during the recession stemmed from both a reduction in hiring and a large increase in layoffs. In contrast, the increase in employment since the end of 2009 has been due to a significant decline in layoffs but only a moderate improvement in hiring. To achieve a more rapid recovery in the job market, hiring rates will need to return to more normal levels.
The Change in Unemployment and Economic Growth: A Puzzle?
What will lead to more hiring and, consequently, further declines in unemployment? The short answer is more-rapid economic growth. Indeed, the improvement in the labor market over the past year--especially the decline in the unemployment rate--has been faster than might have been expected, given that the economy during that time appears to have grown at a relatively modest pace. About 50 years ago, the economist and presidential adviser Arthur Okun identified a rule of thumb that has come to be known as Okun's law. That rule of thumb describes the observed relationship between changes in the unemployment rate and the growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP). Okun noted that, because of ongoing increases in the size of the labor force and in the level of productivity, real GDP growth close to the rate of growth of its potential is normally required just to hold the unemployment rate steady. To reduce the unemployment rate, therefore, the economy must grow at a pace above its potential. More specifically, according to currently accepted versions of Okun's law, to achieve a 1 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate in the course of a year, real GDP must grow approximately 2 percentage points faster than the rate of growth of potential GDP over that period. So, for illustration, if the potential rate of GDP growth is 2 percent, Okun's law says that GDP must grow at about a 4 percent rate for one year to achieve a 1 percentage point reduction in the rate of unemployment.
In light of this historical regularity, the combination of relatively modest GDP growth with the more substantial improvement in the labor market over the past year is something of a puzzle. Resolving this puzzle could give us important insight into how the economy is likely to evolve.
Okun's Law is Useless
There is no puzzle. Rather, Bernanke fails to see the obvious.
1.Demographics are vastly different today in the face of boomer retirements than they were 50 years ago.
2.This a not typical cyclical recession. Instead, it's a consumer deleveraging and balance sheet recession.
Instead of relying on charts, Okun's Law and the Beveridge Curve, how about a little common sense?
Bernanke concluded with ...
... cyclical rather than structural factors are likely the primary source of its substantial increase [in long-term unemployment] during the recession. If this assessment is correct, then accommodative policies to support the economic recovery will help address this problem as well. We must watch long-term unemployment especially carefully, however. Even if the primary cause of high long-term unemployment is insufficient aggregate demand, if progress in reducing unemployment is too slow, the long-term unemployed will see their skills and labor force attachment atrophy further, possibly converting a cyclical problem into a structural one.
If this hypothesis is wrong and structural factors are in fact explaining much of the increase in long-term unemployment, then the scope for countercyclical policies to address this problem will be more limited. Even if that proves to be the case, however, we should not conclude that nothing can be done. If structural factors are the predominant explanation for the increase in long-term unemployment, it will become even more important to take the steps needed to ensure that workers are able to obtain the skills needed to meet the demands of our rapidly changing economy.
Cyclical or Structural Problem?
Bernanke thinks the problem is cyclical. Moreover, his structural thesis involves training. Good grief. He is clueless on both counts.
Instead of his cyclical theory, I propose Fundamental and Mathematical Case for Structurally High Unemployment for a Decade; Shrinking Job Opportunities and the Jobs Gap; The Real Employment Situation.
The problem is debt and deleveraging, not retaining. Bernanke wants consumers to spend more. However, boomers are up to their eyeballs in debt, facing retirement with insufficient income, and a need to downsize lifestyles. These are not the typical cyclical forces, this is a massive demographic shift. Factor in global wage arbitrage and student debt, and the problems are massive.
Middle-Aged Borrowers Pile on Student Debt
Speaking of student debt, Bernanke also missed the fact that Middle-Aged Borrowers piled on student debt hoping to get a better job.
Such debt has a negative payback. For a discussion, please see Consumer Credit "Demolishes Expectations" Really? No Not Really! The "Non-Bounce" in Non-Revolving Credit
People going back to school and staying in school longer explains a significant part of the decline in the participation rate.
Disability Fraud
Looking for another reason for an artificially low unemployment rate?
Consider disability fraud, people claiming disabilities they do not have such as mental illness. Prior to the great recession 33% of applicants claimed mental illness. The number is 43% now.
There was fraud before, of course. There is even more fraud now.
Please see Disability Fraud Holds Down Unemployment Rate; Jobless Disability Claims Hit Record $200B in January for further discussion.
Is Bernanke Angry With Bond Market?
MarketWatch proclaims Bernanke getting angry at the bond market
There are lots of ways to interpret the Federal Reserve’s continual talking down of the U.S. economy, but the comments from Ben Bernanke on Monday have a clear target: the bond market.
Ben has commanded: “Thou shalt take risk.” He also has commanded from Mount Jackson Hole, and other venues: “Bond rates shall stay low.”
But Wall Street traders were starting to disobey. The yield on the 10-year note 10_YEAR +1.70% has been heading the other way. UBS economists have declared the three-decade long bull rally in government bonds is set to end.
Bernanke is fearful that an increase in yields will kill off the recent gains seen in the U.S. economy. That’s why the Fed has started quarterly press conferences and revealing the interest rate forecasts of Federal Open Market Committee members — all to keep a better grip on interest rates.
But that grip is loosening, and probably not helped by the hawks on the Fed who have been on the warpath saying the central bank really isn’t committed to low rates, after all. Just an hour before Bernanke spoke, Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser was in Paris, warning an audience of a central bank without boundaries.
Bernanke is willing to tolerate the likes of Plosser and Dallas Fed Chief Richard Fisher in the name of academic diversity so long as no one actually believes them. But confronted with evidence the hawks are making inroads, Bernanke went to Arlington, Va. to say who’s boss. The U.S. economy needs low interest rates and the Fed’s bond purchases, Bernanke said
Is Bernanke commanding the bond market or is Bernanke simply clueless?
Six Things Bernanke is Clueless About
1.Bernanke somehow missed the fact that demographics are vastly different today than they were 50 years ago.
2.Bernanke somehow missed the fact this a not typical cyclical recession. Instead, it's a consumer deleveraging and balance sheet recession.
3.Bernanke missed student debt problems
4.Bernanke missed structural problems of debt deflation
5.Bernanke missed disability fraud explanation of falling participation rate
6.Bernanke missed middle-age re-schooling reason for falling participation rate
Through it all, Bernanke wonders why Okun's Law does not appear to work. Is that clueless or what?
Source: Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Comment:
Simpler yet, we have allowed 1 million legal immigrants a year to enter the U.S. and obtain work permits for the past 10 years. So, we’ve added 10 million legal aliens to the eligible workforce. We currently retained 12 million illegal immigrants. That’s 22 million workers who have displaced U.S. citizens. We have about 30 million unemployed. We wouldn’t’ have this unemployment problem if we had pumped the brakes on legal immigration and been more effective in reducing illegal immigration. It’s not personal, it’s just math. Our unemployment problem is self-inflicted. To be more precise, it’s inflicted by our pro-globalist, U.N. compliant federal government.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody Tea Party Leader
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Vote No on the Transportation Sales Tax, July 31, 2012
How will your budget change when your sales tax goes up 25% overnight? Plan for it because that's exactly what will happen if you allow the REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION REFERENDUM (formerly the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) to pass in the special election this July 31st.
Georgia collects a 4 percent tax on nearly every product purchase you make. This referendum will raise that to 5 percent. While its proponents call this a penny-tax, those Lincoln-heads add up to hundreds of dollars a year in additional taxes ... potentially thousands if you make any big purchases such as a wardrobe for a new job or needed furniture. Since this is a consumption tax, it is transparent to the income of the person paying it. That will, of course, hit low and fixed income households hardest. Based on projected tax revenue and population, this new tax will cost an average family of four an extra $8,000 over the next 10 years. How's that for a penny hike?
Over and above the 4 percent sales and use tax that goes directly to the state, most of us Georgians already pay an additional 2 or even 3 cents more per dollar in sales tax to our county. So, what's another penny? In such counties, this referendum will raise sales taxes higher than the tax you pay on the income you receive to buy the products on which you pay the sales tax. Not counting federal or local taxes, you will have to earn $115 next year to pay the tax to buy a $100 dollar item.
Most of us realize taxes never die. Toll booths were installed on Georgia 400, for example, to pay for that infrastructure improvement with the promise that they would be removed once the debt was paid. That debt was retired in 2010. Tolls are still being collected. That's because the State Road and Tollway Authority led by then-governor Perdue voted to continue the tolls for ... you guessed it, another 10 years. If the tolls weren't extended, they told us, critical infrastructure projects supporting more growth would not be done. Sound familiar? With 157 projects approved by the Roundtable for the greater Atlanta area, and the need to prioritize these projects as funding comes in, you can expect this new tax to be extended beyond its initial 10 years at least once or twice. That would make it permanent.
Many of us Georgians are still seething over the new I-85 "HOT Lanes". That's understandable. Our bureaucrats spend our hard-earned tax dollars building projects they can then use to collect even more fees (taxes). But the real purpose of these lanes wasn't just to remove money from our pockets. No, the HOT Lanes are a pilot for future infrastructure projects that will, as the HOT Lanes have done, squeeze more traffic into few lanes and further constrict commuters. Why? To better justify more uneconomical spending on mass transit including MARTA. Ninety-five percent of job commuters in the Atlanta metro region use roads, 5% use transit. By constricting options and choices, more frustrated commuters will opt for transit. And this piece of social re-engineering will cost you dearly.
Unlike nearly every one of us drivers who pays 100% of our transportation expense, MARTA passengers in FY 2011 paid less than 1/3 (27%) of the line's operating expenses. To make up the shortfall, MARTA operations are funded by 50% of a one-cent sales tax collected in the City of Atlanta and in Fulton and DeKalb counties. In FY 2011, this amounted to $158.5 million. Federal grants (from tax revenue and borrowing) amounted to another $53.2 million. MARTA still ran a deficit of $70 million on operating expenses of $390 million. Likewise funding available for capital expense was reduced by $100 million when total expenses reached $320.8 million. Despite years of cost and service cutting and recent fare increases MARTA is expected to continue losing tens of millions of dollars every year.
Twenty-two of the 157 projects approved for "investment" in the Atlanta region under the referendum are for transit. These projects will cost us taxpayers $3.16 billion. Of these, at least 11 projects are for MARTA. Only in the inverted economic world of the career politician does it make sense to spend $539 million to upgrade a transportation system that will continue to lose more money.
Unless you VOTE NO on the REFERENDUM July 31, 2012, you can count on every politician, bureaucrat, special interest, MARTA rider, construction worker, union member, and business who stands to gain the use of your money to ensure it is approved. Only YOU can stop your tax from increasing.
Bruce Duncil
A Concerned Taxpayer
Duluth
Georgia collects a 4 percent tax on nearly every product purchase you make. This referendum will raise that to 5 percent. While its proponents call this a penny-tax, those Lincoln-heads add up to hundreds of dollars a year in additional taxes ... potentially thousands if you make any big purchases such as a wardrobe for a new job or needed furniture. Since this is a consumption tax, it is transparent to the income of the person paying it. That will, of course, hit low and fixed income households hardest. Based on projected tax revenue and population, this new tax will cost an average family of four an extra $8,000 over the next 10 years. How's that for a penny hike?
Over and above the 4 percent sales and use tax that goes directly to the state, most of us Georgians already pay an additional 2 or even 3 cents more per dollar in sales tax to our county. So, what's another penny? In such counties, this referendum will raise sales taxes higher than the tax you pay on the income you receive to buy the products on which you pay the sales tax. Not counting federal or local taxes, you will have to earn $115 next year to pay the tax to buy a $100 dollar item.
Most of us realize taxes never die. Toll booths were installed on Georgia 400, for example, to pay for that infrastructure improvement with the promise that they would be removed once the debt was paid. That debt was retired in 2010. Tolls are still being collected. That's because the State Road and Tollway Authority led by then-governor Perdue voted to continue the tolls for ... you guessed it, another 10 years. If the tolls weren't extended, they told us, critical infrastructure projects supporting more growth would not be done. Sound familiar? With 157 projects approved by the Roundtable for the greater Atlanta area, and the need to prioritize these projects as funding comes in, you can expect this new tax to be extended beyond its initial 10 years at least once or twice. That would make it permanent.
Many of us Georgians are still seething over the new I-85 "HOT Lanes". That's understandable. Our bureaucrats spend our hard-earned tax dollars building projects they can then use to collect even more fees (taxes). But the real purpose of these lanes wasn't just to remove money from our pockets. No, the HOT Lanes are a pilot for future infrastructure projects that will, as the HOT Lanes have done, squeeze more traffic into few lanes and further constrict commuters. Why? To better justify more uneconomical spending on mass transit including MARTA. Ninety-five percent of job commuters in the Atlanta metro region use roads, 5% use transit. By constricting options and choices, more frustrated commuters will opt for transit. And this piece of social re-engineering will cost you dearly.
Unlike nearly every one of us drivers who pays 100% of our transportation expense, MARTA passengers in FY 2011 paid less than 1/3 (27%) of the line's operating expenses. To make up the shortfall, MARTA operations are funded by 50% of a one-cent sales tax collected in the City of Atlanta and in Fulton and DeKalb counties. In FY 2011, this amounted to $158.5 million. Federal grants (from tax revenue and borrowing) amounted to another $53.2 million. MARTA still ran a deficit of $70 million on operating expenses of $390 million. Likewise funding available for capital expense was reduced by $100 million when total expenses reached $320.8 million. Despite years of cost and service cutting and recent fare increases MARTA is expected to continue losing tens of millions of dollars every year.
Twenty-two of the 157 projects approved for "investment" in the Atlanta region under the referendum are for transit. These projects will cost us taxpayers $3.16 billion. Of these, at least 11 projects are for MARTA. Only in the inverted economic world of the career politician does it make sense to spend $539 million to upgrade a transportation system that will continue to lose more money.
Unless you VOTE NO on the REFERENDUM July 31, 2012, you can count on every politician, bureaucrat, special interest, MARTA rider, construction worker, union member, and business who stands to gain the use of your money to ensure it is approved. Only YOU can stop your tax from increasing.
Bruce Duncil
A Concerned Taxpayer
Duluth
Monday, March 26, 2012
ObamaCare – How Did We Get Here
How It Used To Be
My grandpa was a Physician & Surgeon. He was born in 1886. He was home schooled , worked on the family farm and took another job in town at age 11. He hired a tutor and worked and studied for 5 years. He entered Barnes Medical College in St. Louis at age 16. He graduated in 1905 at age 19, Summa cum Laude and was named Professor of Internal Medicine, which he performed while doing his surgical residency.
Grandpa’s practice was largely house calls; he also treated patients at his office and occasionally in one of the hospitals. He maintained a charity practice for poor farmers every Saturday until his death in 1962. He would buy and bring whatever medicine they needed and he was paid with bushels of crops, live chickens and whatever they raised and grew. This charity practice was in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, his home town.
How It Changed
Until the 1970s, most hospitals were either county hospitals or hospitals owned by the churches and charity organizations. Many hospitals were taken over by for-profit corporations and costs started to rise. Medicine began to embrace the use of expensive equipment to test, diagnose and treat illnesses. By the 1970s, home healthcare all but ended. Everybody went to the hospital or clinic for everything.
It Took a Wrong Turn
At some point, some politician decided that all hospitals should admit everybody, even if they couldn’t pay for the treatment and it was over. Up to that point, those without money went to the county hospital. This put a strain on the private hospitals that has resulted in the high cost mess we’re in today.
This took place in large cities and not so much in rural areas. Rural communities took care of their own, but when the city hospitals caved, the rest of the country followed suit.
It was Preventable
The private hospitals simply could have said NO. People who need cars, but have no money don’t get cars. That actually would have worked.
It’s not too Late
We could say that even now. All it would take is for private hospitals to join together and make their case. It’s a political battle worth fighting.
Home Healthcare Revisited
Isn’t it odd, that home healthcare is becoming more popular. The brutal costs of hospital care have forced this exodus from the hospitals. It’s a good trend. It’s how it used to work.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
My grandpa was a Physician & Surgeon. He was born in 1886. He was home schooled , worked on the family farm and took another job in town at age 11. He hired a tutor and worked and studied for 5 years. He entered Barnes Medical College in St. Louis at age 16. He graduated in 1905 at age 19, Summa cum Laude and was named Professor of Internal Medicine, which he performed while doing his surgical residency.
Grandpa’s practice was largely house calls; he also treated patients at his office and occasionally in one of the hospitals. He maintained a charity practice for poor farmers every Saturday until his death in 1962. He would buy and bring whatever medicine they needed and he was paid with bushels of crops, live chickens and whatever they raised and grew. This charity practice was in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, his home town.
How It Changed
Until the 1970s, most hospitals were either county hospitals or hospitals owned by the churches and charity organizations. Many hospitals were taken over by for-profit corporations and costs started to rise. Medicine began to embrace the use of expensive equipment to test, diagnose and treat illnesses. By the 1970s, home healthcare all but ended. Everybody went to the hospital or clinic for everything.
It Took a Wrong Turn
At some point, some politician decided that all hospitals should admit everybody, even if they couldn’t pay for the treatment and it was over. Up to that point, those without money went to the county hospital. This put a strain on the private hospitals that has resulted in the high cost mess we’re in today.
This took place in large cities and not so much in rural areas. Rural communities took care of their own, but when the city hospitals caved, the rest of the country followed suit.
It was Preventable
The private hospitals simply could have said NO. People who need cars, but have no money don’t get cars. That actually would have worked.
It’s not too Late
We could say that even now. All it would take is for private hospitals to join together and make their case. It’s a political battle worth fighting.
Home Healthcare Revisited
Isn’t it odd, that home healthcare is becoming more popular. The brutal costs of hospital care have forced this exodus from the hospitals. It’s a good trend. It’s how it used to work.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Transit costs more than it gives
By Steve Brown
The Transportation Investment Act, or TIA, is turning into an infomercial like you see on TV, promising to revolutionize your lives, never living up to the hype.
Over half the total funding, $3.2 billion, is going to a mode of transportation that less than 5 percent of commuters choose to use — mass transit.
TIA was created to relieve regional traffic congestion, but the process was hijacked by special interest desires, shelving many legitimate road projects.
The indoctrination via the advertising on why you should vote for the TIA has begun. Special interests, most recently the Metro Atlanta Voter Education Network, backed by groups such as the Metro Atlanta Chamber, are spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 million trying to convince you to support the TIA. The obvious question is, if the list of projects is so beneficial, then why do they need to spend so much trying to persuade us?
Likewise, if voting for the TIA is a no-brainer, then why did the Legislature build in a financial penalty for local county transportation projects if the TIA is voted down?
Even with all their power and money, these special interests know it’s the voters — demanding efficient and accountable government and not likely to be wooed by the thought of perpetual indebtedness to an underused and broken transit system — who have the real power to simply say “no.”
It’s a tough sell, saying the way to solve our traffic congestion problem is to take our mass-transit system — that is 80 percent or more subsidized, with huge budget deficits, has billions in backlogged maintenance and is used by less than 5 percent of commuters — and make it bigger.
Look for small print on those ads saying the only way to fund the exorbitant future operations and maintenance expenses of an expanded transit system is with a permanent regional sales tax. Once you install the permanent regional sales tax, it never goes away.
The barrage of favorable TIA ads with no reporting of the harsh financial downside could influence voters who know very little about our infrastructure.
Sadly, most government officials refer to inflated “economic development” benefits because the TIA does little for traffic congestion.
We need formal debates on the TIA as soon as possible and to upload them to the Internet. The voters deserve to hear both sides of the argument, not just a whitewashed horde of feel-good ads from chamber of commerce types.
Hopefully, TIA supporters will accept my debate challenge, and let’s have two teams provide an open dialogue so the voters can be properly informed and not brainwashed by $7 million worth of lopsided advertising.
Steve Brown is a Fayette County commissioner.
The Transportation Investment Act, or TIA, is turning into an infomercial like you see on TV, promising to revolutionize your lives, never living up to the hype.
Over half the total funding, $3.2 billion, is going to a mode of transportation that less than 5 percent of commuters choose to use — mass transit.
TIA was created to relieve regional traffic congestion, but the process was hijacked by special interest desires, shelving many legitimate road projects.
The indoctrination via the advertising on why you should vote for the TIA has begun. Special interests, most recently the Metro Atlanta Voter Education Network, backed by groups such as the Metro Atlanta Chamber, are spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 million trying to convince you to support the TIA. The obvious question is, if the list of projects is so beneficial, then why do they need to spend so much trying to persuade us?
Likewise, if voting for the TIA is a no-brainer, then why did the Legislature build in a financial penalty for local county transportation projects if the TIA is voted down?
Even with all their power and money, these special interests know it’s the voters — demanding efficient and accountable government and not likely to be wooed by the thought of perpetual indebtedness to an underused and broken transit system — who have the real power to simply say “no.”
It’s a tough sell, saying the way to solve our traffic congestion problem is to take our mass-transit system — that is 80 percent or more subsidized, with huge budget deficits, has billions in backlogged maintenance and is used by less than 5 percent of commuters — and make it bigger.
Look for small print on those ads saying the only way to fund the exorbitant future operations and maintenance expenses of an expanded transit system is with a permanent regional sales tax. Once you install the permanent regional sales tax, it never goes away.
The barrage of favorable TIA ads with no reporting of the harsh financial downside could influence voters who know very little about our infrastructure.
Sadly, most government officials refer to inflated “economic development” benefits because the TIA does little for traffic congestion.
We need formal debates on the TIA as soon as possible and to upload them to the Internet. The voters deserve to hear both sides of the argument, not just a whitewashed horde of feel-good ads from chamber of commerce types.
Hopefully, TIA supporters will accept my debate challenge, and let’s have two teams provide an open dialogue so the voters can be properly informed and not brainwashed by $7 million worth of lopsided advertising.
Steve Brown is a Fayette County commissioner.
Just Fix the Roads
Improving Transportation for All and Not Just the Few
A look into U.S. metropolitan cities’ disproportionate transportation
spending by Adrian Moore March 14, 2012
Fairness is a hot topic these days. Anger over crony "capitalist" schemes using government policies that benefit only the few at the cost of the many is cutting across party lines. Despite this frustration, unfair policies abound, often with feeble justification.
Transportation policies are great examples of policymakers' unfair use of taxpayers' money. Take a look at the table below which gives data for a few metro areas in the United States. For starters, notice the percentage of transportation spending devoted to public transit relative to the percentage of expected use of that public transit. How can anyone think it fair or even wise to spend on average 25-70 percent of transportation spending on a public system that will, at best, carry only 5-8.5 percent of all metro area travel? This also means planning to spend only 30-75 percent of the money on the transportation system carrying close to 90 percent of travel - the roads.
(The table referred to above shows disproportionate tax spending on public transit in Atlanta, Denver Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. The ARC 1% sales tax increase T-SPLOST vote July 31, 2012 proposed to spend 53% of $6.14 billion on public transit over 10 years.)
That kind of lopsided spending is outrageously unfair. Why should less than 10 percent of the people in a metro area claim 50, 60, or even 70 percent of transportation resources? And lest you think this disproportionate spending is about providing transportation for the poor, keep in mind that most of the transit money these cities plan to spend will go to rail transit, mainly used by the middle class, while local governments continue to slash bus service which is mainly used by the poor.
This division of resources is unsustainable. The roads carry the majority of commuters, including the buses used by the poor. But the roads are being systematically underfunded in these metro areas, allowed to deteriorate, and are not being expanded to keep up with growth in travel.
And you can see the results in the last two columns in the chart above. In every metro area, congestion will get worse with current plans. Could there be a connection between spending most of the money on a minority of travelers and worsening congestion? Yes, there is.
These metro area governments, along with those in the nation's other major metro areas, each plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on transportation over the next 20 years as they predict congestion will become worse.
If the school system came to us and said "we plan to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, and school test scores will still go down," would we accept that?
If the police force came to us and said "we plan to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, and crime will still go up," would we accept that?
So why do we accept governments planning for failure with tens of billions of dollars of transportation spending from our taxes?
It is time taxpayers start demanding cities and states quit planning for failure and that local governments stop spending a large chunk of transportation funding on a minority of commuters. It is time to start building transportation networks in our major metro areas that improve mobility for everyoneand provide better roads and create better transit with less congestion.
What would that entail? Well, it is complex. For insights on how to accomplish this, check out Reason Foundation's Galvin Mobility Project for research on solving congestion, with specific mobility plans for Atlanta and Lee County, Fla. Some key elements to these plans include:
•Add HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes to the freeway network. Sometimes called managed lanes or express lanes, these lanes allow buses and carpools to go free, and charge others a toll to use them. They are priced high enough so that they remain free-flowing even during rush hour.
•Add express buses or Bus Rapid Transit that can use the HOT lanes as a way to provide faster transit services.
•Improve the major boulevards to provide better mobility between neighboring parts of town. For starters this means signal light synchronization. And removing signals from some selected arterials in each direction by building queue duckers or flyovers (under or overpasses for the middle lanes) for through traffic. Those may be tolled.
•Identify additional freeway segments or connections in the freeway network and build them as toll tunnels. Analysis for several such projects shows that toll revenues can pay much of the costs and provide huge benefits in return for the balance provided from transportation funds.
Reason Foundation's analysis of Atlanta and Lee County, Fla., along with several other major metro areas, shows that these approaches would actually reduce congestion while spending roughly the same percentage of transportation funds. Less congestion and more choices for travelers -- what's not to like? And why isn't this the plan for these cities already?
Adrian Moore, Ph.D., is vice president of policy at Reason Foundation.
http://reason.org/news/show/improving-transportation-for-all-an
Comment:
Adrian is right to condemn overspending for underutilized trains and buses, but then he takes a giant gulp of kool aid and recommends that we embrace what we consider to be the other half of the nightmare. We don't like HOV or Toll Lanes. We don't like unelected Regional soviet appointed officials usurping county and city sovereignty and responsibility. We would rather see states, counties and cities spend more on road maintenance and expansion and less on everything else. We would rather see bus service go private.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
A look into U.S. metropolitan cities’ disproportionate transportation
spending by Adrian Moore March 14, 2012
Fairness is a hot topic these days. Anger over crony "capitalist" schemes using government policies that benefit only the few at the cost of the many is cutting across party lines. Despite this frustration, unfair policies abound, often with feeble justification.
Transportation policies are great examples of policymakers' unfair use of taxpayers' money. Take a look at the table below which gives data for a few metro areas in the United States. For starters, notice the percentage of transportation spending devoted to public transit relative to the percentage of expected use of that public transit. How can anyone think it fair or even wise to spend on average 25-70 percent of transportation spending on a public system that will, at best, carry only 5-8.5 percent of all metro area travel? This also means planning to spend only 30-75 percent of the money on the transportation system carrying close to 90 percent of travel - the roads.
(The table referred to above shows disproportionate tax spending on public transit in Atlanta, Denver Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. The ARC 1% sales tax increase T-SPLOST vote July 31, 2012 proposed to spend 53% of $6.14 billion on public transit over 10 years.)
That kind of lopsided spending is outrageously unfair. Why should less than 10 percent of the people in a metro area claim 50, 60, or even 70 percent of transportation resources? And lest you think this disproportionate spending is about providing transportation for the poor, keep in mind that most of the transit money these cities plan to spend will go to rail transit, mainly used by the middle class, while local governments continue to slash bus service which is mainly used by the poor.
This division of resources is unsustainable. The roads carry the majority of commuters, including the buses used by the poor. But the roads are being systematically underfunded in these metro areas, allowed to deteriorate, and are not being expanded to keep up with growth in travel.
And you can see the results in the last two columns in the chart above. In every metro area, congestion will get worse with current plans. Could there be a connection between spending most of the money on a minority of travelers and worsening congestion? Yes, there is.
These metro area governments, along with those in the nation's other major metro areas, each plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on transportation over the next 20 years as they predict congestion will become worse.
If the school system came to us and said "we plan to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, and school test scores will still go down," would we accept that?
If the police force came to us and said "we plan to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, and crime will still go up," would we accept that?
So why do we accept governments planning for failure with tens of billions of dollars of transportation spending from our taxes?
It is time taxpayers start demanding cities and states quit planning for failure and that local governments stop spending a large chunk of transportation funding on a minority of commuters. It is time to start building transportation networks in our major metro areas that improve mobility for everyoneand provide better roads and create better transit with less congestion.
What would that entail? Well, it is complex. For insights on how to accomplish this, check out Reason Foundation's Galvin Mobility Project for research on solving congestion, with specific mobility plans for Atlanta and Lee County, Fla. Some key elements to these plans include:
•Add HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes to the freeway network. Sometimes called managed lanes or express lanes, these lanes allow buses and carpools to go free, and charge others a toll to use them. They are priced high enough so that they remain free-flowing even during rush hour.
•Add express buses or Bus Rapid Transit that can use the HOT lanes as a way to provide faster transit services.
•Improve the major boulevards to provide better mobility between neighboring parts of town. For starters this means signal light synchronization. And removing signals from some selected arterials in each direction by building queue duckers or flyovers (under or overpasses for the middle lanes) for through traffic. Those may be tolled.
•Identify additional freeway segments or connections in the freeway network and build them as toll tunnels. Analysis for several such projects shows that toll revenues can pay much of the costs and provide huge benefits in return for the balance provided from transportation funds.
Reason Foundation's analysis of Atlanta and Lee County, Fla., along with several other major metro areas, shows that these approaches would actually reduce congestion while spending roughly the same percentage of transportation funds. Less congestion and more choices for travelers -- what's not to like? And why isn't this the plan for these cities already?
Adrian Moore, Ph.D., is vice president of policy at Reason Foundation.
http://reason.org/news/show/improving-transportation-for-all-an
Comment:
Adrian is right to condemn overspending for underutilized trains and buses, but then he takes a giant gulp of kool aid and recommends that we embrace what we consider to be the other half of the nightmare. We don't like HOV or Toll Lanes. We don't like unelected Regional soviet appointed officials usurping county and city sovereignty and responsibility. We would rather see states, counties and cities spend more on road maintenance and expansion and less on everything else. We would rather see bus service go private.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Inflation is the Disease
The Great Myth of the Inflation Cure by Doug French
Parents probably dream of sending their kid to the University of Chicago. Next to the Ivy League or Stanford, the Chicago school is near the top of the heap. Only 27 percent of applicants are admitted. To be among the roughly 15,000 means prestige and an education to build a lifetime on. The cost for tuition and fees: $39,381. Room and board is another $12,000 or so. Add books and other stuff, and the total Chicago-school experience costs $54,290 a year.
Students learn from the likes of University of Chicago economics professor Casey B. Mulligan, who believes what the economy needs right now is a little inflation in all the right places to make things better. Professor Mulligan writes for the "Economix" section of the New York Times, which goes about the task of "Explaining the Science of Everyday Life."
Mulligan writes that normally inflation is harmful, but "these days inflation may do less harm than good." He points out that the prices of most goods march upward over time and that this "general increase in consumer prices is called inflation." Of course that's not true. The increase in prices is the result of inflation, which is the increasing of the supply of money: thus the term "inflating" the money supply.
The Chicago economist then writes that the Federal Reserve is charged with limiting inflation, "which it can do over the long run by limiting the supply of money and similar assets in the hands of the public."
In the long run, the Federal Reserve has decimated a dollar's value down to 2 cents in the just short of a century it has been around. In August of 1971, M2 money supply was $685 billion, in March 2011, M2 was $8.9 trillion.
Mulligan writes that people complain about rising prices, but forget that their wages are going up at the same time, so consumer purchasing power is unharmed. Inflation-adjusted wages have been flat to negative. It has taken two incomes to pay for a household for decades now. Perhaps Mulligan should get out more.
Seniors should quit bitching, according to Mulligan because, "Social Security benefits automatically increase with wages in the economy, and thereby automatically increase with inflation in the long run." However, according to Social Security Online, "Under existing law, there can be no COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] in 2011." Why?
As determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is no increase in the CPI-W [Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers] from the third quarter of 2008, the last year a COLA was determined, to the third quarter of 2010.
So the government says there is no price inflation and so no COLA for you, retirees. Retirees know better and so does John Williams at Shadowstats, who says prices are increasing at a 10 percent rate.
"While Mulligan sees Bernanke with a fine-tipped artist's brush, the Fed is actually using a spray gun with an unknowable fan size."
Government spending leads to government borrowing, which leads to inflation when central banks create money out of nowhere to fund that debt. However, the Chicago economist claims his work shows that inflation is not associated with increased government spending.
Rightly, Mulligan points out that taxes crimp saving and investment. But for his big finish, Mulligan claims that since so many people are underwater on their mortgages and because this is hampering economic growth, "an inflation that harmed banks and helped homeowners might be an overall improvement."
One gets the impression that in Mulligan's ivory-tower world, Ben Bernanke creates money like Picasso painted a picture. After careful contemplation, staring at the canvass (economy), Ben dabs his brush into his palette, and then, calmly and carefully, applies the proper color and amount of paint (money), a gentle stroke, in just the right spot.
F.A. Hayek, who joined the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 1950, believed that money printing could not be used to assure total employment or to pump up the prices of desired assets whether they be houses or something else. It was impossible for central bankers to know where the money would go or what the exact effects would be.
Hayek said, In the study of such complex phenomena as the market, which depend on the actions of many individuals, all the circumstances which will determine the outcome of a process … will hardly ever be fully known or measurable.
So while Mulligan sees Bernanke with a fine-tipped artist's brush, the Fed is actually using a spray gun with an unknowable fan size. The money goes some places and not others.
There are bubbles in art prices, while tract-home prices sink. Catfish prices are jumping, but television prices are sinking.
Peter Klein wrote that while at Chicago Hayek found himself among a dazzling group, with an economics department led by Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, and later George Stigler.
Back in 1950, having Hayek and Knight teach your kid economics would have been worth the price. But $50,000 for Professor Mulligan's theories? Try the Mises Academy instead.
Source: Townhall
Comment:
Government overspending results in Federal Reserve money printing that reduces the value of the dollar and results in prices rising. Any questions ?
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Parents probably dream of sending their kid to the University of Chicago. Next to the Ivy League or Stanford, the Chicago school is near the top of the heap. Only 27 percent of applicants are admitted. To be among the roughly 15,000 means prestige and an education to build a lifetime on. The cost for tuition and fees: $39,381. Room and board is another $12,000 or so. Add books and other stuff, and the total Chicago-school experience costs $54,290 a year.
Students learn from the likes of University of Chicago economics professor Casey B. Mulligan, who believes what the economy needs right now is a little inflation in all the right places to make things better. Professor Mulligan writes for the "Economix" section of the New York Times, which goes about the task of "Explaining the Science of Everyday Life."
Mulligan writes that normally inflation is harmful, but "these days inflation may do less harm than good." He points out that the prices of most goods march upward over time and that this "general increase in consumer prices is called inflation." Of course that's not true. The increase in prices is the result of inflation, which is the increasing of the supply of money: thus the term "inflating" the money supply.
The Chicago economist then writes that the Federal Reserve is charged with limiting inflation, "which it can do over the long run by limiting the supply of money and similar assets in the hands of the public."
In the long run, the Federal Reserve has decimated a dollar's value down to 2 cents in the just short of a century it has been around. In August of 1971, M2 money supply was $685 billion, in March 2011, M2 was $8.9 trillion.
Mulligan writes that people complain about rising prices, but forget that their wages are going up at the same time, so consumer purchasing power is unharmed. Inflation-adjusted wages have been flat to negative. It has taken two incomes to pay for a household for decades now. Perhaps Mulligan should get out more.
Seniors should quit bitching, according to Mulligan because, "Social Security benefits automatically increase with wages in the economy, and thereby automatically increase with inflation in the long run." However, according to Social Security Online, "Under existing law, there can be no COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] in 2011." Why?
As determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is no increase in the CPI-W [Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers] from the third quarter of 2008, the last year a COLA was determined, to the third quarter of 2010.
So the government says there is no price inflation and so no COLA for you, retirees. Retirees know better and so does John Williams at Shadowstats, who says prices are increasing at a 10 percent rate.
"While Mulligan sees Bernanke with a fine-tipped artist's brush, the Fed is actually using a spray gun with an unknowable fan size."
Government spending leads to government borrowing, which leads to inflation when central banks create money out of nowhere to fund that debt. However, the Chicago economist claims his work shows that inflation is not associated with increased government spending.
Rightly, Mulligan points out that taxes crimp saving and investment. But for his big finish, Mulligan claims that since so many people are underwater on their mortgages and because this is hampering economic growth, "an inflation that harmed banks and helped homeowners might be an overall improvement."
One gets the impression that in Mulligan's ivory-tower world, Ben Bernanke creates money like Picasso painted a picture. After careful contemplation, staring at the canvass (economy), Ben dabs his brush into his palette, and then, calmly and carefully, applies the proper color and amount of paint (money), a gentle stroke, in just the right spot.
F.A. Hayek, who joined the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 1950, believed that money printing could not be used to assure total employment or to pump up the prices of desired assets whether they be houses or something else. It was impossible for central bankers to know where the money would go or what the exact effects would be.
Hayek said, In the study of such complex phenomena as the market, which depend on the actions of many individuals, all the circumstances which will determine the outcome of a process … will hardly ever be fully known or measurable.
So while Mulligan sees Bernanke with a fine-tipped artist's brush, the Fed is actually using a spray gun with an unknowable fan size. The money goes some places and not others.
There are bubbles in art prices, while tract-home prices sink. Catfish prices are jumping, but television prices are sinking.
Peter Klein wrote that while at Chicago Hayek found himself among a dazzling group, with an economics department led by Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, and later George Stigler.
Back in 1950, having Hayek and Knight teach your kid economics would have been worth the price. But $50,000 for Professor Mulligan's theories? Try the Mises Academy instead.
Source: Townhall
Comment:
Government overspending results in Federal Reserve money printing that reduces the value of the dollar and results in prices rising. Any questions ?
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Friday, March 23, 2012
New Ryan Budget
Ryan Unvails New Budget Blueprint…and Here’s a Rundown
Posted on March 20, 2012 by Christopher Santarelli
After a bitter political fight with Democrats in 2011 that resulted in Congress failing to pass a budget for the third straight year, Republicans controlling the House have stepped to plate once again, unveiling the blueprint Tuesday for their budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Accompanied by a slick new YouTube video and op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, House Republicans led by Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan plan to slash domestic spending, lower tax rates and balance the budget by 2040.
“Courageous Democrats have joined our efforts. And bipartisan opposition to the path of broken promises is growing,” writes Rep. Ryan in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday. ”And so Tuesday, House Republicans are introducing a new Path to Prosperity budget that builds on what we’ve achieved.”
Last year, Rep. Ryan’s budget passed in the House but was ignored by Senate Democrats. Democratic congressional candidates used the budget in campaign ads directed towards seniors concerned about Medicare, which Republicans accused as “scare tactics” that distorted the reality of their plan.
If enacted into law, the Associated Press reports that the GOP’s new plan would wrestle the deficit to a manageable size in short order, but only by cutting Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and a host of other programs that Obama has promised to protect:
“To deal with the influx of retiring Baby Boomers, the GOP budget reprises a controversial approach to overhauling Medicare that would switch the program – for those under 55 today – from a traditional ‘fee for service’ framework in which the government pays doctor and hospital bills to a voucherlike ‘premium support’ approach in which the government subsidizes purchases of health insurance.
Republicans say the new approach forces competition upon a wasteful health care system, lowering cost increases and giving senior more options. But Democratic opponents of the idea say the new system – designed by Ryan and liberal Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon – cuts costs too steeply and would provide the elderly with a steadily shrinking menu of options and higher out-of-pocket costs.”
Rep. Ryan argues that the new plan achieves real spending discipline, not at the sacrifice of our military, and gets the nation’s fiscal house in order by ending “the epidemic of crony politics and government overreach that has weakened confidence in the nation’s institutions and its economy. ”
The Washington Post reports that the new proposal would replace the current tax structure’s six brackets with just two tax levels, a 10-percent marginal tax rate for lower-income earners and 25-percent for upper-income earners.
“That would be a reduction from the current top marginal rate of 35 percent. The plan would also lower the top corporate income tax rate to 25 percent and virtually eliminate taxes on corporate profits brought back from overseas. And it would do away with the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was designed to hit the wealthiest taxpayers, but increasingly also affects upper-middle-income earners.
Republicans have been urging an overhaul that would make the tax code simpler and easier to understand while lowering rates, which they believe will spur economic growth and prove a politically potent election-year message. Ryan’s proposal is similar to ones offered by both GOP presidential candidates former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.”
While Republicans have been met with some willingness to legislate from lone Democrats, like Oregon’s Ron Wyden, all signs point to political partisanship and Democrats attempting to use the budget not as a practical measure but as a campaign issue once again.
POLITICO reports that Democrats are organizing media blitzes, House floor speeches and town halls back home to slam the Ryan budget, before unveiling their own budget next week which calls for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich.
“They can run, but they cannot hide from their Medicare plan, which ends the Medicare guarantee at the same time they’re providing big new tax breaks to millionaires and protecting special interest tax loopholes,” Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen told POLITICO in an interview Monday.
POLITICO notes that the DCCC announced Monday that it raised $6.3 million in February and had $16.4 million cash on hand — giving Democrats plenty of money to use against the GOP and Ryan’s plan this cycle.
President Obama released his budget for FY 2013 in February, a $3.8 trillion spending plan that seeks to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. The President’s plan looks to achieve $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions through tax increases on the wealthy and removing certain corporate tax breaks. The plan will seek to make sure that households making more than $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.
The New York Times reports on the stark differences between White House and Republican plans:
“Under the House plan, the current $1.18 trillion deficit would fall to $797 billion in the coming fiscal year, compared with $977 billion under Mr. Obama’s plan. By 2016, the deficit would fall to $241 billion by Republican estimates. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that Mr. Obama’s budget would still have a $529 billion deficit in 2016.
The Ryan plan would accumulate $3.1 trillion in additional debt through 2022. The president’s would add $6.4 trillion, more than twice that total. The Republican budget cuts spending by $5 trillion more than the president’s plan, mandates the repeal of Mr. Obama’s health care law and assumes the elimination of the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who chaired the failed Congressional deficit reduction super committee, called Rep. Ryan’s approach to debt reduction “outrageous and deeply disappointing.”
“By desperately attempting to appease their extreme conservative base, House Republicans are reneging on a deal their own Speaker shook on less than eight months ago,” she said to The Washington Post. “They have shown that a deal with them isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and they are threatening families across America yet again with the prospect of a government shutdown.”
Rep. Ryan makes his case in the 3-minute campaign style YouTube video “The Path to Prosperity Budget: Your Country. Your Future. Your Choice.”
“It’s up to the people to demand from their government a better budget, a better plan, and a choice between two futures,” Rep.Ryan said in the video, which even had its own trailer released last week. “The question is: which future will we choose?”
The White House responded to the Ryan budget proposal just an hour after the plan’s release Tuesday morning. In a statement, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the plan ”fails the test of balance, fairness, and shared responsibility“ and would ”end Medicare as we know it.”
The Hill reports that Pfeiffer said the GOP proposal would “shower the wealthiest few Americans with an average tax cut of at least $150,000″ and at the same time would preserve taxpayer giveaways to oil companies and breaks for Wall Street executives.
Source: The Blaze
Comment:
Vouchers for Medicare could end the “bottomless pit” problem with healthcare costs if coupled with tort reform, removal of regulations and a real reengineering effort inside the healthcare industry.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Posted on March 20, 2012 by Christopher Santarelli
After a bitter political fight with Democrats in 2011 that resulted in Congress failing to pass a budget for the third straight year, Republicans controlling the House have stepped to plate once again, unveiling the blueprint Tuesday for their budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Accompanied by a slick new YouTube video and op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, House Republicans led by Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan plan to slash domestic spending, lower tax rates and balance the budget by 2040.
“Courageous Democrats have joined our efforts. And bipartisan opposition to the path of broken promises is growing,” writes Rep. Ryan in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday. ”And so Tuesday, House Republicans are introducing a new Path to Prosperity budget that builds on what we’ve achieved.”
Last year, Rep. Ryan’s budget passed in the House but was ignored by Senate Democrats. Democratic congressional candidates used the budget in campaign ads directed towards seniors concerned about Medicare, which Republicans accused as “scare tactics” that distorted the reality of their plan.
If enacted into law, the Associated Press reports that the GOP’s new plan would wrestle the deficit to a manageable size in short order, but only by cutting Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and a host of other programs that Obama has promised to protect:
“To deal with the influx of retiring Baby Boomers, the GOP budget reprises a controversial approach to overhauling Medicare that would switch the program – for those under 55 today – from a traditional ‘fee for service’ framework in which the government pays doctor and hospital bills to a voucherlike ‘premium support’ approach in which the government subsidizes purchases of health insurance.
Republicans say the new approach forces competition upon a wasteful health care system, lowering cost increases and giving senior more options. But Democratic opponents of the idea say the new system – designed by Ryan and liberal Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon – cuts costs too steeply and would provide the elderly with a steadily shrinking menu of options and higher out-of-pocket costs.”
Rep. Ryan argues that the new plan achieves real spending discipline, not at the sacrifice of our military, and gets the nation’s fiscal house in order by ending “the epidemic of crony politics and government overreach that has weakened confidence in the nation’s institutions and its economy. ”
The Washington Post reports that the new proposal would replace the current tax structure’s six brackets with just two tax levels, a 10-percent marginal tax rate for lower-income earners and 25-percent for upper-income earners.
“That would be a reduction from the current top marginal rate of 35 percent. The plan would also lower the top corporate income tax rate to 25 percent and virtually eliminate taxes on corporate profits brought back from overseas. And it would do away with the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was designed to hit the wealthiest taxpayers, but increasingly also affects upper-middle-income earners.
Republicans have been urging an overhaul that would make the tax code simpler and easier to understand while lowering rates, which they believe will spur economic growth and prove a politically potent election-year message. Ryan’s proposal is similar to ones offered by both GOP presidential candidates former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.”
While Republicans have been met with some willingness to legislate from lone Democrats, like Oregon’s Ron Wyden, all signs point to political partisanship and Democrats attempting to use the budget not as a practical measure but as a campaign issue once again.
POLITICO reports that Democrats are organizing media blitzes, House floor speeches and town halls back home to slam the Ryan budget, before unveiling their own budget next week which calls for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich.
“They can run, but they cannot hide from their Medicare plan, which ends the Medicare guarantee at the same time they’re providing big new tax breaks to millionaires and protecting special interest tax loopholes,” Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen told POLITICO in an interview Monday.
POLITICO notes that the DCCC announced Monday that it raised $6.3 million in February and had $16.4 million cash on hand — giving Democrats plenty of money to use against the GOP and Ryan’s plan this cycle.
President Obama released his budget for FY 2013 in February, a $3.8 trillion spending plan that seeks to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. The President’s plan looks to achieve $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions through tax increases on the wealthy and removing certain corporate tax breaks. The plan will seek to make sure that households making more than $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.
The New York Times reports on the stark differences between White House and Republican plans:
“Under the House plan, the current $1.18 trillion deficit would fall to $797 billion in the coming fiscal year, compared with $977 billion under Mr. Obama’s plan. By 2016, the deficit would fall to $241 billion by Republican estimates. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that Mr. Obama’s budget would still have a $529 billion deficit in 2016.
The Ryan plan would accumulate $3.1 trillion in additional debt through 2022. The president’s would add $6.4 trillion, more than twice that total. The Republican budget cuts spending by $5 trillion more than the president’s plan, mandates the repeal of Mr. Obama’s health care law and assumes the elimination of the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who chaired the failed Congressional deficit reduction super committee, called Rep. Ryan’s approach to debt reduction “outrageous and deeply disappointing.”
“By desperately attempting to appease their extreme conservative base, House Republicans are reneging on a deal their own Speaker shook on less than eight months ago,” she said to The Washington Post. “They have shown that a deal with them isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and they are threatening families across America yet again with the prospect of a government shutdown.”
Rep. Ryan makes his case in the 3-minute campaign style YouTube video “The Path to Prosperity Budget: Your Country. Your Future. Your Choice.”
“It’s up to the people to demand from their government a better budget, a better plan, and a choice between two futures,” Rep.Ryan said in the video, which even had its own trailer released last week. “The question is: which future will we choose?”
The White House responded to the Ryan budget proposal just an hour after the plan’s release Tuesday morning. In a statement, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the plan ”fails the test of balance, fairness, and shared responsibility“ and would ”end Medicare as we know it.”
The Hill reports that Pfeiffer said the GOP proposal would “shower the wealthiest few Americans with an average tax cut of at least $150,000″ and at the same time would preserve taxpayer giveaways to oil companies and breaks for Wall Street executives.
Source: The Blaze
Comment:
Vouchers for Medicare could end the “bottomless pit” problem with healthcare costs if coupled with tort reform, removal of regulations and a real reengineering effort inside the healthcare industry.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Oil & Gas Down on Federal Land
Production of Oil, Gas and Coal on Federal Lands Sinks to Nine-Year
Low by Rob Bluey March 19, 2012
Last fall the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration reported a 40 percent decline in oil and natural gas production on federal lands compared to 10 years ago.
The White House and a prominent liberal in Congress protested. They said EIA, a trusted source for reliable energy information, was wrong. They complained that EIA hadn’t accounted for all data from the Department of Interior.
EIA released an updated analysis last week. And while the number isn’t as drastic as originally reported, EIA confirmed the Obama administration is overseeing a sharp decline in fossil fuel production (coal, oil, and natural gas) on federal lands, which recently hit its lowest point in nine years.
The updated EIA report revealed a 12 percent decline in production for coal, oil, and natural gas on federal and Indian lands from fiscal 2003 through fiscal 2011.
During this same period, production on state and private lands has increased, boosting overall production numbers for the United States. That’s a point even President Obama will acknowledge: “Under my Administration, domestic oil and natural gas production is up,” he said upon announcing his rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Obama is correct. He just can’t rightfully claim the credit, since the vast majority of America’s new oil and gas production is happening on private lands in states like North Dakota, Alaska and Texas.
The administration, meanwhile, has also taken several steps to limit production. Heritage’s Nick Loris noted these four steps taken by the Obama administration:
Withdrew areas offered for 77 oil and gas leases in Utah that could cost American taxpayers millions in lost lease bids, production royalties, new jobs and the energy needed to offset rising imports of oil and natural gas.
Cancelled lease sales in the Western Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast and delayed exploration off the coast of Alaska and kept other resource-rich areas off-limits.
Finalized rules, first announced by Secretary Salazar on January 6, 2010, to establish more government hurdles to onshore oil and natural gas production on federal lands.
Withdrew 61 oil and natural gas leases in Montana as part of a lawsuit settlement over climate change.
“The big picture is clear that government policies undertaken by the Obama administration have produced a significant decline in offshore oil production on federal lands in fiscal year 2011,” the Institute for Energy Researchsaid in response to last week’s updated EIA analysis. “That is certainly not a way to increase domestic production of oil and keep oil and thus gasoline prices in check.”
While it was waiting for EIA to update its numbers, the Institute for Energy Research conducted its own analysis of Department of Interior data in February. It came to the same conclusion: “Production on federal lands is down, while production on state and private lands is up.”
Source: The Foundry
Low by Rob Bluey March 19, 2012
Last fall the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration reported a 40 percent decline in oil and natural gas production on federal lands compared to 10 years ago.
The White House and a prominent liberal in Congress protested. They said EIA, a trusted source for reliable energy information, was wrong. They complained that EIA hadn’t accounted for all data from the Department of Interior.
EIA released an updated analysis last week. And while the number isn’t as drastic as originally reported, EIA confirmed the Obama administration is overseeing a sharp decline in fossil fuel production (coal, oil, and natural gas) on federal lands, which recently hit its lowest point in nine years.
The updated EIA report revealed a 12 percent decline in production for coal, oil, and natural gas on federal and Indian lands from fiscal 2003 through fiscal 2011.
During this same period, production on state and private lands has increased, boosting overall production numbers for the United States. That’s a point even President Obama will acknowledge: “Under my Administration, domestic oil and natural gas production is up,” he said upon announcing his rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Obama is correct. He just can’t rightfully claim the credit, since the vast majority of America’s new oil and gas production is happening on private lands in states like North Dakota, Alaska and Texas.
The administration, meanwhile, has also taken several steps to limit production. Heritage’s Nick Loris noted these four steps taken by the Obama administration:
Withdrew areas offered for 77 oil and gas leases in Utah that could cost American taxpayers millions in lost lease bids, production royalties, new jobs and the energy needed to offset rising imports of oil and natural gas.
Cancelled lease sales in the Western Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast and delayed exploration off the coast of Alaska and kept other resource-rich areas off-limits.
Finalized rules, first announced by Secretary Salazar on January 6, 2010, to establish more government hurdles to onshore oil and natural gas production on federal lands.
Withdrew 61 oil and natural gas leases in Montana as part of a lawsuit settlement over climate change.
“The big picture is clear that government policies undertaken by the Obama administration have produced a significant decline in offshore oil production on federal lands in fiscal year 2011,” the Institute for Energy Researchsaid in response to last week’s updated EIA analysis. “That is certainly not a way to increase domestic production of oil and keep oil and thus gasoline prices in check.”
While it was waiting for EIA to update its numbers, the Institute for Energy Research conducted its own analysis of Department of Interior data in February. It came to the same conclusion: “Production on federal lands is down, while production on state and private lands is up.”
Source: The Foundry
High Inflation Ahead
Charles Goyette: 'High Inflation Crisis' Looms for U.S.
Friday, 16 Mar 2012 by Forrest Jones and Kathleen Walter
Runaway government spending and excessively loose monetary policies are set to send U.S. inflation rates spiking, says Libertarian author Charles Goyette.
To combat what it saw as deflationary threats and uncomfortably high unemployment rates, the Federal Reserve bought trillions in mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bonds from banks during the past couple of years, flooding the economy with inflation-fueling liquidity in the process.
Considering all that liquidity remains in the economy while government spending remains rampant, consumer prices are set to soar.
"I'm afraid the stage is already being set right now and it's certainly a high inflation crisis. You can see the incipient signs of rising prices in all kinds of areas," Goyette told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.
A good portion of that excess liquidity has ended up in commodities markets, which has sent crude and food prices rising.
"These things don't start going up because of the phases of the moon or because of the weather," said the author of the recently released “Red And Blue And Broke All Over.”
"The rises in commodities prices across the board is a result of the Federal Reserve trying to monetize the deficit and give the politicians cover for their irresponsible spending by printing the money to cover it up so we don't have to go out and borrow it," Goyette says.
The Federal Reserve isn't the only culprit, as central banks worldwide have been flooding their respective economies with liquidity to stave off recession without giving thought to the inflationary consequences that tend to follow.
"We're not the only ones doing it. The Bank of England is doing it, the Bank of Japan. China is inflating, even the Swiss for crying out loud, and the European Central Bank. We have a global problem of money printing that's going to explode in our faces in the next year or so."
Such a monetary policy is technically known as quantitative easing, although critics say asset purchases from banks are merely money printing.
The best way to get the economy growing again and really bring down unemployment rates, which remain well above pre-crisis levels, is by letting the private sector heal on its own.
"As far as the unemployment rate, the single best thing we could ever do is we have to get government out of the picture."
Fiscal stimulus measures don't work, as they run up the government's debt burden without creating lasting employment, Goyette says.
"When World War II ended, the federal government cut spending by two thirds and this country boomed like you cannot believe. We haven't had a boom like that since. And they cut spending by two-thirds to achieve it."
Don't blame President Barack Obama and the Democrats alone, Goyette says, as Republicans deserve their fare share of the blame as well.
Bipartisan attempts at streamlining the overwhelmingly bloated U.S. public debt burden end up in political impasses and are too toothless to make an impact anyway.
"They come up with bipartisan commissions and they're going to cut $2 trillion over nine or 10 years — that's $200 billion a year. We had one month I think it was last month or month before where we ran a $200 billion deficit just in that month," Goyette says.
"Normally we're running at least a $100 billion deficit a month ... Not only is the country broke, but the red party and the blue party are both into this thing up to their eyeballs."
Source: Moneynews
Comments:
Growth moves come before anything else. The first is energy resource production of all domestic sources of oil and natural gas, including 100% of federal land and ocean drilling. Next is tax exempting all manufacturing operations in the U.S. Next is paring back on immigration; bringing in 1 million new immigrants a year is just stupid. Obviously we need E-Verify everywhere to dry up the illegal immigrant population and we need to seal the border.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Friday, 16 Mar 2012 by Forrest Jones and Kathleen Walter
Runaway government spending and excessively loose monetary policies are set to send U.S. inflation rates spiking, says Libertarian author Charles Goyette.
To combat what it saw as deflationary threats and uncomfortably high unemployment rates, the Federal Reserve bought trillions in mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bonds from banks during the past couple of years, flooding the economy with inflation-fueling liquidity in the process.
Considering all that liquidity remains in the economy while government spending remains rampant, consumer prices are set to soar.
"I'm afraid the stage is already being set right now and it's certainly a high inflation crisis. You can see the incipient signs of rising prices in all kinds of areas," Goyette told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.
A good portion of that excess liquidity has ended up in commodities markets, which has sent crude and food prices rising.
"These things don't start going up because of the phases of the moon or because of the weather," said the author of the recently released “Red And Blue And Broke All Over.”
"The rises in commodities prices across the board is a result of the Federal Reserve trying to monetize the deficit and give the politicians cover for their irresponsible spending by printing the money to cover it up so we don't have to go out and borrow it," Goyette says.
The Federal Reserve isn't the only culprit, as central banks worldwide have been flooding their respective economies with liquidity to stave off recession without giving thought to the inflationary consequences that tend to follow.
"We're not the only ones doing it. The Bank of England is doing it, the Bank of Japan. China is inflating, even the Swiss for crying out loud, and the European Central Bank. We have a global problem of money printing that's going to explode in our faces in the next year or so."
Such a monetary policy is technically known as quantitative easing, although critics say asset purchases from banks are merely money printing.
The best way to get the economy growing again and really bring down unemployment rates, which remain well above pre-crisis levels, is by letting the private sector heal on its own.
"As far as the unemployment rate, the single best thing we could ever do is we have to get government out of the picture."
Fiscal stimulus measures don't work, as they run up the government's debt burden without creating lasting employment, Goyette says.
"When World War II ended, the federal government cut spending by two thirds and this country boomed like you cannot believe. We haven't had a boom like that since. And they cut spending by two-thirds to achieve it."
Don't blame President Barack Obama and the Democrats alone, Goyette says, as Republicans deserve their fare share of the blame as well.
Bipartisan attempts at streamlining the overwhelmingly bloated U.S. public debt burden end up in political impasses and are too toothless to make an impact anyway.
"They come up with bipartisan commissions and they're going to cut $2 trillion over nine or 10 years — that's $200 billion a year. We had one month I think it was last month or month before where we ran a $200 billion deficit just in that month," Goyette says.
"Normally we're running at least a $100 billion deficit a month ... Not only is the country broke, but the red party and the blue party are both into this thing up to their eyeballs."
Source: Moneynews
Comments:
Growth moves come before anything else. The first is energy resource production of all domestic sources of oil and natural gas, including 100% of federal land and ocean drilling. Next is tax exempting all manufacturing operations in the U.S. Next is paring back on immigration; bringing in 1 million new immigrants a year is just stupid. Obviously we need E-Verify everywhere to dry up the illegal immigrant population and we need to seal the border.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Democrat Sues to Boot Obama from Ballot
Alleges he 'has not established being a natural-born citizen,or even a citizen'
by BOB UNRUH
Another lawsuit has been filed asking state officials to remove Barack Obama’s name from the 2012 election ballot because he has not documented that he is eligible for the office, but this case in Florida has a twist: It was brought by a Democrat.
The case was filed by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch USA on behalf of Democrat Michael Voeltz, “a registered member of the Democrat Party, voter, and taxpayer in Broward County, who was an eligible elector for the Florida Primary of Jan. 31, 2012.”
As part of his responsibilities, the lawsuit explains, Voeltz took “an oath to ‘protect and defend’ the U.S. Constitution.”
The complaint cites widely reported suspicions that Obama might not have been born in the United States and the fact that his father never was a U.S. citizen. It contends that because of those circumstances, Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” as the Constitution demands of the president.
Named as defendants are Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner and the state Elections Canvassing Commission.
“The requirement for natural-born citizenship,which is found in the
U.S.Constitution, was intended to prevent foreign influences from
‘influencing’an American president,” Klayman said as the action was
being filed.“These ‘influences’have regrettably been witnessed by
the American people during President Obama’s term in office. It is
clear the Founding Fathers intended to avoid such a situation,where
an American president seems to frequently sympathize with and take
actions benefitting foreign interests.”
Discover what the Constitution’s reference to “natural born citizen” means and whether Barack Obama qualifies, in the ebook version of “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?”
Klayman explained that the U.S. Constitution mandates a president must be a “natural born citizen” – born to two U.S. citizens. Neither Obama nor the Democratic Party of Florida nor any other group has confirmed that Obama is a “natural born citizen” since his father was a British subject born in Kenya and not a citizen of the United States, Klayman said.
The Florida Election Code allows any voter or taxpayer to challenge any candidate who is ineligible for public office in the Leon County courts. If the secretary of state cannot confirm Obama’s eligibility, then Klayman is demanding the court grant an injunction preventing Obama’s name from appearing on the Florida General Election Ballot in 2012.
Klayman was a U.S. Senate candidate in Florida in 2004. He formerly headed Judicial Watch and in that capacity appeared in Florida courts in the famous case of Gore v. Bush before Judge N. Sanders Sauls in Leon County.
The new case raises a number of issues:
On or about April 2011, only after years into his presidency, and under media and political pressure, Barack Hussein Obama published on the Internet an electronic version of a purported birth certificate alleging his birth in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961, to American citizen mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Kenyan British subject father, Barack Obama Senior,” the complaint explains.
There is credible evidence indicating that this electronically produced birth certificate is entirely fraudulent or otherwise altered. No physical, paper copy of the actual long form birth certificate has been produced in order to definitively establish Barack Hussein Obama’s birth within the United States.”
The action follows by only weeks the release of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigation into Obama’s antecedents. The six-month-long investigation done by professional law enforcement officers working on a volunteer basis for Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse found that there is probable cause to believe there was forgery involved in the production of Obama’s birth certificate, and fraud in presenting that document as a genuine document.
Even if Barack Hussein Obama was born within the United Sates, he is still not a ‘natural-born citizen’ as required by the U.S. Constitution,” the lawsuit states. “Barack Obama Sr. was born in the British Colony of Kenya on June 18, 1936. Birth in Kenya made Barack Obama Sr. a British subject, according to and governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948.
The lawsuit notes that state officials in Florida never have tried to ascertain Obama’s eligibility even though they are under oath to “support the U.S. Constitution.”
“Defendant Barack Hussein Obama has not established the eligibility requirements set forth by the U.S. Constitution of being a natural born citizen, or even a citizen, of the United States,” the case states.
It seeks a determination that the state must following the U.S. Constitution and verify Obama’s eligibility or make a determination itself of Obama’s eligibility.
The new case follows about a dozen others that already have been filed on similar grounds in other states. While most of the cases have been dismissed, some now are on appeal.
In Georgia, for example, a terse rejection by the state Supreme Court has opened the door to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In that case, the recent abrupt rejection by the state Supreme Court indicates the state’s “laws and courts are a sham,” one case participant suggested.
The comment comes from Van Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation, one of several attorneys who started out several weeks ago with a challenge to Obama’s candidacy based on a state law that allows residents to require candidates to prove their eligibility for the office they seek.
At the hearing level, an administrative law judge simply threw out all of the evidence and ruled in favor of Obama, who, along with his lawyer, snubbed the hearing and refused to appear.
An intermediate court followed suit and now the state Supreme Court has issued a terse denial.
“Upon consideration of applicant’s ‘Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction,’ the motion is hereby denied,” the court said in a one-line refusal.
Irion had asked the court to halt the certification of the primary election results that included Obama’s name until the court case could be argued.
“I believe that this latest ruling proves that Georgia law does not apply to the powerful,” Irion said in today’s statement to supporters and others. “Put another way, Georgia laws are enforced against the powerless by the powerful, but when the powerless try to have the laws applied to the powerful the courts protect the powerful.
“This is worse than anarchy. With total anarchy everyone knows that the powerful rule. With anarchy everyone understands that the only rules are the rules that the powerful want to enforce, when the powerful want to enforce them. What we have in Georgia is a system of laws and courts that appear to be fair and claim to be impartial, but in reality the purpose of the laws and courts is to deceive the people into thinking that justice is possible. The laws and courts are a sham. The courts serve to disguise the one-sided enforcement of the law.”
In Georgia, the challenges to Obama were raised by several individuals represented by different attorneys. They brought the arguments under a state law that allows any citizen to challenge the qualifications of a candidate.
The plaintiffs argued several points before administrative law judge Michael Malihi, including Obama’s alleged failure to qualify as a “natural-born citizen.”
Citizens raising concerns include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by Orly Taitz; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield. Cody Judy is raising a challenge because he also wants to be on the ballot.
Source: World News Daily
Comment:
The recent work posted on-line by Jerome Corsi and Sheriff Joe Arpaio lately leads us to conclude that Obama is an Indonesian citizen, with forged papers, whose Harvard Law School expenses were paid for by Bill Ayres’ parents. The fact that Obama’s father was not a U.S. citizen has not been disputed. The purpose of the law suits is to get the courts to rule that Obama is not eligible because one of his parents was not a U.S. citizen.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
by BOB UNRUH
Another lawsuit has been filed asking state officials to remove Barack Obama’s name from the 2012 election ballot because he has not documented that he is eligible for the office, but this case in Florida has a twist: It was brought by a Democrat.
The case was filed by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch USA on behalf of Democrat Michael Voeltz, “a registered member of the Democrat Party, voter, and taxpayer in Broward County, who was an eligible elector for the Florida Primary of Jan. 31, 2012.”
As part of his responsibilities, the lawsuit explains, Voeltz took “an oath to ‘protect and defend’ the U.S. Constitution.”
The complaint cites widely reported suspicions that Obama might not have been born in the United States and the fact that his father never was a U.S. citizen. It contends that because of those circumstances, Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” as the Constitution demands of the president.
Named as defendants are Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner and the state Elections Canvassing Commission.
“The requirement for natural-born citizenship,which is found in the
U.S.Constitution, was intended to prevent foreign influences from
‘influencing’an American president,” Klayman said as the action was
being filed.“These ‘influences’have regrettably been witnessed by
the American people during President Obama’s term in office. It is
clear the Founding Fathers intended to avoid such a situation,where
an American president seems to frequently sympathize with and take
actions benefitting foreign interests.”
Discover what the Constitution’s reference to “natural born citizen” means and whether Barack Obama qualifies, in the ebook version of “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?”
Klayman explained that the U.S. Constitution mandates a president must be a “natural born citizen” – born to two U.S. citizens. Neither Obama nor the Democratic Party of Florida nor any other group has confirmed that Obama is a “natural born citizen” since his father was a British subject born in Kenya and not a citizen of the United States, Klayman said.
The Florida Election Code allows any voter or taxpayer to challenge any candidate who is ineligible for public office in the Leon County courts. If the secretary of state cannot confirm Obama’s eligibility, then Klayman is demanding the court grant an injunction preventing Obama’s name from appearing on the Florida General Election Ballot in 2012.
Klayman was a U.S. Senate candidate in Florida in 2004. He formerly headed Judicial Watch and in that capacity appeared in Florida courts in the famous case of Gore v. Bush before Judge N. Sanders Sauls in Leon County.
The new case raises a number of issues:
On or about April 2011, only after years into his presidency, and under media and political pressure, Barack Hussein Obama published on the Internet an electronic version of a purported birth certificate alleging his birth in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961, to American citizen mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Kenyan British subject father, Barack Obama Senior,” the complaint explains.
There is credible evidence indicating that this electronically produced birth certificate is entirely fraudulent or otherwise altered. No physical, paper copy of the actual long form birth certificate has been produced in order to definitively establish Barack Hussein Obama’s birth within the United States.”
The action follows by only weeks the release of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigation into Obama’s antecedents. The six-month-long investigation done by professional law enforcement officers working on a volunteer basis for Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse found that there is probable cause to believe there was forgery involved in the production of Obama’s birth certificate, and fraud in presenting that document as a genuine document.
Even if Barack Hussein Obama was born within the United Sates, he is still not a ‘natural-born citizen’ as required by the U.S. Constitution,” the lawsuit states. “Barack Obama Sr. was born in the British Colony of Kenya on June 18, 1936. Birth in Kenya made Barack Obama Sr. a British subject, according to and governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948.
The lawsuit notes that state officials in Florida never have tried to ascertain Obama’s eligibility even though they are under oath to “support the U.S. Constitution.”
“Defendant Barack Hussein Obama has not established the eligibility requirements set forth by the U.S. Constitution of being a natural born citizen, or even a citizen, of the United States,” the case states.
It seeks a determination that the state must following the U.S. Constitution and verify Obama’s eligibility or make a determination itself of Obama’s eligibility.
The new case follows about a dozen others that already have been filed on similar grounds in other states. While most of the cases have been dismissed, some now are on appeal.
In Georgia, for example, a terse rejection by the state Supreme Court has opened the door to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In that case, the recent abrupt rejection by the state Supreme Court indicates the state’s “laws and courts are a sham,” one case participant suggested.
The comment comes from Van Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation, one of several attorneys who started out several weeks ago with a challenge to Obama’s candidacy based on a state law that allows residents to require candidates to prove their eligibility for the office they seek.
At the hearing level, an administrative law judge simply threw out all of the evidence and ruled in favor of Obama, who, along with his lawyer, snubbed the hearing and refused to appear.
An intermediate court followed suit and now the state Supreme Court has issued a terse denial.
“Upon consideration of applicant’s ‘Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction,’ the motion is hereby denied,” the court said in a one-line refusal.
Irion had asked the court to halt the certification of the primary election results that included Obama’s name until the court case could be argued.
“I believe that this latest ruling proves that Georgia law does not apply to the powerful,” Irion said in today’s statement to supporters and others. “Put another way, Georgia laws are enforced against the powerless by the powerful, but when the powerless try to have the laws applied to the powerful the courts protect the powerful.
“This is worse than anarchy. With total anarchy everyone knows that the powerful rule. With anarchy everyone understands that the only rules are the rules that the powerful want to enforce, when the powerful want to enforce them. What we have in Georgia is a system of laws and courts that appear to be fair and claim to be impartial, but in reality the purpose of the laws and courts is to deceive the people into thinking that justice is possible. The laws and courts are a sham. The courts serve to disguise the one-sided enforcement of the law.”
In Georgia, the challenges to Obama were raised by several individuals represented by different attorneys. They brought the arguments under a state law that allows any citizen to challenge the qualifications of a candidate.
The plaintiffs argued several points before administrative law judge Michael Malihi, including Obama’s alleged failure to qualify as a “natural-born citizen.”
Citizens raising concerns include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by Orly Taitz; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield. Cody Judy is raising a challenge because he also wants to be on the ballot.
Source: World News Daily
Comment:
The recent work posted on-line by Jerome Corsi and Sheriff Joe Arpaio lately leads us to conclude that Obama is an Indonesian citizen, with forged papers, whose Harvard Law School expenses were paid for by Bill Ayres’ parents. The fact that Obama’s father was not a U.S. citizen has not been disputed. The purpose of the law suits is to get the courts to rule that Obama is not eligible because one of his parents was not a U.S. citizen.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Bush Tax Cuts End in 2013
Harvard’s Feldstein: Obama’s Tax Hikes to Spark New Recession
Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012 07:09 AM by Julie Crawshaw
Martin Feldstein, former chief economic adviser to Ronald Reagan, says the most important cloud on the economic recovery horizon is the large tax increase that will occur next year unless legislation is passed to block it.
"The Congressional Budget Office predicts that, under current law, the revenue of the federal government will rise from $2.4 trillion in the current fiscal year, which ends in September, to $2.9 trillion in the following fiscal year," Feldstein writes in the Financial Times.
That increase of $512 billion is equivalent to 2.9 percent of GDP, bringing federal revenue as a share of GDP from 15.8 percent this year to 18.7 percent next year, notes Feldman, a professor of economics at Harvard University.
The higher revenue would reflect an increase in personal tax rates, higher payroll taxes, as well as higher taxes on dividends, capital gains and corporate incomes. Revenue would continue to rise in future years – as a share of GDP it would increase to 19.8 percent in 2014 and would stay above 20 percent for the remainder of the decade.
"A sustained tax increase of that magnitude would push the U.S. into a new and deep recession next year,” says Feldman. “So, it is important to recognize that legislation is required to prevent such a tax rise.”
Feldstein believes getting that legislation passed will be difficult.
“Mr. Obama has said he wants to keep the high rates for upper income taxpayers and to raise total taxes on corporations and other businesses,” Feldstein observes.
“The Republicans in Congress and the Republican presidential candidates have indicated they want to avoid all of the increases that are specified in the current law and to start a process of tax reform.”
“So the 2013 tax rates will depend on the outcome of the presidential elections in November.”
Other experts are also painting a bleak future for the U.S. economy.
Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder says the United States is cruising toward a 2013 "fiscal cliff."
"As tax cuts expire and spending falls, the economy will be hit with a 3.5 percent decline in gross domestic demand," Blinder writes in The Wall Street Journal.
Blinder says a number of decisions to kick the budgetary can down the road have conspired to place a remarkably large fiscal contraction on the calendar for January 2013 — unless Congress takes action to avoid it.
“And if you're like me, the phrase ‘unless Congress takes action’ sends a chill down your spine — especially since the cliff came about because of Congress's past inability to agree,” says Blinder.
Source: Moneynews.
Comment:
We will need a Republican Whitehouse and Senate and House of Representatives to pull this off. We need to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and cut $1 trillion a year from the federal budget. The $1 trillion cut should start in 2013 and may affect the economy short-term, but most of the spending is destructive, strangling overreach. If federal responsibilities are transferred to the states, real reform can take place and efficiencies are possible. I would expect a strong infusion of private capital for energy production would be immediate. At this point, it’s the only ride we have.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012 07:09 AM by Julie Crawshaw
Martin Feldstein, former chief economic adviser to Ronald Reagan, says the most important cloud on the economic recovery horizon is the large tax increase that will occur next year unless legislation is passed to block it.
"The Congressional Budget Office predicts that, under current law, the revenue of the federal government will rise from $2.4 trillion in the current fiscal year, which ends in September, to $2.9 trillion in the following fiscal year," Feldstein writes in the Financial Times.
That increase of $512 billion is equivalent to 2.9 percent of GDP, bringing federal revenue as a share of GDP from 15.8 percent this year to 18.7 percent next year, notes Feldman, a professor of economics at Harvard University.
The higher revenue would reflect an increase in personal tax rates, higher payroll taxes, as well as higher taxes on dividends, capital gains and corporate incomes. Revenue would continue to rise in future years – as a share of GDP it would increase to 19.8 percent in 2014 and would stay above 20 percent for the remainder of the decade.
"A sustained tax increase of that magnitude would push the U.S. into a new and deep recession next year,” says Feldman. “So, it is important to recognize that legislation is required to prevent such a tax rise.”
Feldstein believes getting that legislation passed will be difficult.
“Mr. Obama has said he wants to keep the high rates for upper income taxpayers and to raise total taxes on corporations and other businesses,” Feldstein observes.
“The Republicans in Congress and the Republican presidential candidates have indicated they want to avoid all of the increases that are specified in the current law and to start a process of tax reform.”
“So the 2013 tax rates will depend on the outcome of the presidential elections in November.”
Other experts are also painting a bleak future for the U.S. economy.
Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder says the United States is cruising toward a 2013 "fiscal cliff."
"As tax cuts expire and spending falls, the economy will be hit with a 3.5 percent decline in gross domestic demand," Blinder writes in The Wall Street Journal.
Blinder says a number of decisions to kick the budgetary can down the road have conspired to place a remarkably large fiscal contraction on the calendar for January 2013 — unless Congress takes action to avoid it.
“And if you're like me, the phrase ‘unless Congress takes action’ sends a chill down your spine — especially since the cliff came about because of Congress's past inability to agree,” says Blinder.
Source: Moneynews.
Comment:
We will need a Republican Whitehouse and Senate and House of Representatives to pull this off. We need to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and cut $1 trillion a year from the federal budget. The $1 trillion cut should start in 2013 and may affect the economy short-term, but most of the spending is destructive, strangling overreach. If federal responsibilities are transferred to the states, real reform can take place and efficiencies are possible. I would expect a strong infusion of private capital for energy production would be immediate. At this point, it’s the only ride we have.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
ObamaCare Cost Trends
What is really at stake in the fight to repeal ObamaCare?
by Carrie Lukas
Will it be a job killer? Absolutely. Will it do real and significant damage to the economy? For sure, as the CBO confirmed just last week when it reported that the real price tag will be upwards of $1.76 trillion over 10 years.
Here's another under-covered drawback to ObamaCare: It will fundamentally change the ethics in the medical profession.
Writing at Reason.com, practicing surgeon Jeffrey Singer lays out in explicit detail the increasing bureaucratization of the medical profession, and what that kind of top-down command is doing to the practice of medicine:
[Gradually the medical profession has been forced to give up this [the Hippocratic] approach for what I like to call a “veterinary ethic,” one that places the interests of the payer (or owner) ahead of the patient. For example, when a pet owner is told by a veterinarian that the pet has a very serious medical condition requiring extremely costly surgery or other therapy, the veterinarian presents the pet’s owner with one or more options—from attempt at cure, to palliation, to euthanasia—with the associated costs, and then follows the wishes of the owner.
ObamaCare represents the culmination of a major paradigm shift in the practice of medicine — one that reorients the system from serving the needs of patients where decisions are made between individuals and their doctors, to a system where doctors become wards of the state, serving the interests of their big government bosses who ultimately pay their bills.
Dr. Singer goes on to lay out the stark reality of the threat this poses to medical ethics:
[Hospital administrators will have more control over their medical staff. If doctors don’t follow the protocols and guidelines, and desired outcomes are not reached, hospitals can replace the “problem” doctors.
So where does all this place the medical profession with respect to its ethical credo? In a few years, almost all doctors will be employees of hospitals and will be ordered to practice medicine according to federally prescribed guidelines—guidelines that put the best interests of the state ahead of the interests of individual patients.
When the physician’s primary obligation is to satisfy the wishes of the payer—ultimately the wishes of the state—how can patients be truly confident in their doctors’ decisions?
This is the coming crisis. And this is why repeal of ObamaCare is imperative.
Later this week, the House of Representatives will have the opportunity to vote to repeal one of the ObamaCare-created systems Dr. Singer highlights as a major component to this threat to the very nature of our medical care — the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB.
Please call or email your Congressman today. Tell him or her of the threat ObamaCare and IPAB pose to the integrity of the medical profession and to the quality of care patients will receive.
Tell your Congressman that there is no better place to start removing the ObamaCare cancer from America than with repeal of IPAB.
Source: Carrie Lukas VP of Policy & Economics Independent Women's Voice, 3/19/12
NTL Comment:
The fact that Physicians will be working for hospitals has economic consequences we’ve seen before. Add more federal control over healthcare and bureaucracy explodes. This would really be “death by a thousand permits”. I can’t think of another thing that would continue to explode medical costs. ObamaCare was brought to you by the same crowd that wants to increase the cost of everything 5 fold as soon as they can, so they can crash our economy and establish their Soviet Gulags.
Government likes to build very expensive buildings where nothing much good goes on, like public schools, bureaucrats’ cubicles and legislative chambers.
A better approach would be to look toward home health care with doctors in charge and remove the federal government control of healthcare by transferring Medicare, Medicaid and all other functions to the states.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader.
by Carrie Lukas
Will it be a job killer? Absolutely. Will it do real and significant damage to the economy? For sure, as the CBO confirmed just last week when it reported that the real price tag will be upwards of $1.76 trillion over 10 years.
Here's another under-covered drawback to ObamaCare: It will fundamentally change the ethics in the medical profession.
Writing at Reason.com, practicing surgeon Jeffrey Singer lays out in explicit detail the increasing bureaucratization of the medical profession, and what that kind of top-down command is doing to the practice of medicine:
[Gradually the medical profession has been forced to give up this [the Hippocratic] approach for what I like to call a “veterinary ethic,” one that places the interests of the payer (or owner) ahead of the patient. For example, when a pet owner is told by a veterinarian that the pet has a very serious medical condition requiring extremely costly surgery or other therapy, the veterinarian presents the pet’s owner with one or more options—from attempt at cure, to palliation, to euthanasia—with the associated costs, and then follows the wishes of the owner.
ObamaCare represents the culmination of a major paradigm shift in the practice of medicine — one that reorients the system from serving the needs of patients where decisions are made between individuals and their doctors, to a system where doctors become wards of the state, serving the interests of their big government bosses who ultimately pay their bills.
Dr. Singer goes on to lay out the stark reality of the threat this poses to medical ethics:
[Hospital administrators will have more control over their medical staff. If doctors don’t follow the protocols and guidelines, and desired outcomes are not reached, hospitals can replace the “problem” doctors.
So where does all this place the medical profession with respect to its ethical credo? In a few years, almost all doctors will be employees of hospitals and will be ordered to practice medicine according to federally prescribed guidelines—guidelines that put the best interests of the state ahead of the interests of individual patients.
When the physician’s primary obligation is to satisfy the wishes of the payer—ultimately the wishes of the state—how can patients be truly confident in their doctors’ decisions?
This is the coming crisis. And this is why repeal of ObamaCare is imperative.
Later this week, the House of Representatives will have the opportunity to vote to repeal one of the ObamaCare-created systems Dr. Singer highlights as a major component to this threat to the very nature of our medical care — the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB.
Please call or email your Congressman today. Tell him or her of the threat ObamaCare and IPAB pose to the integrity of the medical profession and to the quality of care patients will receive.
Tell your Congressman that there is no better place to start removing the ObamaCare cancer from America than with repeal of IPAB.
Source: Carrie Lukas VP of Policy & Economics Independent Women's Voice, 3/19/12
NTL Comment:
The fact that Physicians will be working for hospitals has economic consequences we’ve seen before. Add more federal control over healthcare and bureaucracy explodes. This would really be “death by a thousand permits”. I can’t think of another thing that would continue to explode medical costs. ObamaCare was brought to you by the same crowd that wants to increase the cost of everything 5 fold as soon as they can, so they can crash our economy and establish their Soviet Gulags.
Government likes to build very expensive buildings where nothing much good goes on, like public schools, bureaucrats’ cubicles and legislative chambers.
A better approach would be to look toward home health care with doctors in charge and remove the federal government control of healthcare by transferring Medicare, Medicaid and all other functions to the states.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader.
The Federalist Solution
By Jonah Goldberg Mar 21, 2012
The bleating about broken government and partisanship continues. "Why can't those boobs in Washington agree on anything?" We're constantly told that the way to fix the country is to dethrone the left and right and empower the middle. Americans Elect, No Labels, the Gangs of Six and Fourteen, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans: Handing things over to these middling mincers and half-a-loafers is supposed to be the answer to all of our problems. It's as if we should just put Nelson Rockefeller's mug on the dollar bill and be done with it.
But what if the real compromise isn't in forcing the left and the right to heel. What if instead the solution is to disempower the national elites who think they've got the answers to everything?
Federalism -- the process whereby you push most political questions to the lowest democratic level possible -- has been ripe on the right for years now. It even had a champion in Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Ron Paul still carries that torch.
The main advantage of federalism is more fundamental than the so-called "laboratories of democracy" idea. Federalism is simply the best political system ever conceived of for maximizing human happiness. A one-size-fits-all policy imposed at the national level has the potential to make very large numbers of citizens unhappy, even if it was arrived at democratically. In a pure democracy, I always say, 51 percent of the people can vote to pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people.
Pushing government decisions down to the lowest democratic level possible -- while protecting basic civil rights -- guarantees that more people will have a say in how they live their lives. Not only does that mean more people will be happy, but the moral legitimacy of political decisions will be greater.
The problem for conservative and libertarian federalists is that whenever we talk about federalism, the left hears "states' rights" -- which is then immediately, and unfairly, translated into "Bring back Bull Connor."
But that may be changing. In an essay for the spring issue of "Democracy Journal," Yale law professor Heather K. Gerken offers the case for "A New Progressive Federalism."
Gerken's chief concern is how to empower "minorities and dissenters." Not surprisingly, she defines such people in almost purely left-wing terms of race and sexual orientation. Still, she makes the very compelling point that the current understanding of diversity -- including minorities as tokens of inclusion -- pretty much guarantees that racial minorities will always be political minorities as well.
"While the diversity paradigm guarantees racial minorities a vote or voice on every decision-making body, it also ensures that they will be the political losers on any issue on which people divide along racial lines," Gerken writes. "Racial minorities are thus destined to be the junior partner or dissenting gadfly in the democratic process. So much for dignity."
Allowing local majorities to have their way, Gerken continues, "turns the tables. It allows the usual winners to lose and the usual losers to win. It gives racial minorities the chance to shed the role of influencer or gadfly and stand in the shoes of the majority."
She's right, and not just about her favored groups. For instance, Mormons (not a group Gerken highlights) are a national minority. But they are a Utah majority. Hence, Utah takes on Mormon characteristics. It's no theocracy, but it is more representative and distinctive. In areas where Latinos or blacks are the majority, what's so terrible about having institutions that reflect their values?
And, let them all live by their mistakes as well. In San Francisco, which Gerken touts as a haven for "dissenters," they translate their values into law. I think much of what passes for wise policy in San Francisco is idiotic, but it bothers me less than it would if Nancy Pelosi succeeded in making all of America like San Francisco.
I don't see eye to eye with Gerken on everything, and I suspect she would be reluctant to push the welfare state downward. (Public employees in Galveston, Texas, for instance, are not part of the Social Security system.)
Still, I'm delighted her essay has received respectful treatment on the left. A left-right federalist compromise would make America a happier, freer, more prosperous and interesting country. It would also dethrone those in both parties who think they know what's best for more than 300 million Americans.
Source: Townhall
Comment:
This Federalism referred to above is supported by the Constitution and the 10th Amendment. If we could pare down the federal government to be constitutionally compliant, we wouldn’t have any federal laws or federal departments or agencies except those authorized by the U.S. Constitution. Closing those federal groups would result in an annual savings of $1.6 trillion a year. That is the way to balance the budget. The states would become responsible for these functions and they already have groups to do that. More importantly, the President couldn’t sell us down the river to the U.N.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
The bleating about broken government and partisanship continues. "Why can't those boobs in Washington agree on anything?" We're constantly told that the way to fix the country is to dethrone the left and right and empower the middle. Americans Elect, No Labels, the Gangs of Six and Fourteen, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans: Handing things over to these middling mincers and half-a-loafers is supposed to be the answer to all of our problems. It's as if we should just put Nelson Rockefeller's mug on the dollar bill and be done with it.
But what if the real compromise isn't in forcing the left and the right to heel. What if instead the solution is to disempower the national elites who think they've got the answers to everything?
Federalism -- the process whereby you push most political questions to the lowest democratic level possible -- has been ripe on the right for years now. It even had a champion in Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Ron Paul still carries that torch.
The main advantage of federalism is more fundamental than the so-called "laboratories of democracy" idea. Federalism is simply the best political system ever conceived of for maximizing human happiness. A one-size-fits-all policy imposed at the national level has the potential to make very large numbers of citizens unhappy, even if it was arrived at democratically. In a pure democracy, I always say, 51 percent of the people can vote to pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people.
Pushing government decisions down to the lowest democratic level possible -- while protecting basic civil rights -- guarantees that more people will have a say in how they live their lives. Not only does that mean more people will be happy, but the moral legitimacy of political decisions will be greater.
The problem for conservative and libertarian federalists is that whenever we talk about federalism, the left hears "states' rights" -- which is then immediately, and unfairly, translated into "Bring back Bull Connor."
But that may be changing. In an essay for the spring issue of "Democracy Journal," Yale law professor Heather K. Gerken offers the case for "A New Progressive Federalism."
Gerken's chief concern is how to empower "minorities and dissenters." Not surprisingly, she defines such people in almost purely left-wing terms of race and sexual orientation. Still, she makes the very compelling point that the current understanding of diversity -- including minorities as tokens of inclusion -- pretty much guarantees that racial minorities will always be political minorities as well.
"While the diversity paradigm guarantees racial minorities a vote or voice on every decision-making body, it also ensures that they will be the political losers on any issue on which people divide along racial lines," Gerken writes. "Racial minorities are thus destined to be the junior partner or dissenting gadfly in the democratic process. So much for dignity."
Allowing local majorities to have their way, Gerken continues, "turns the tables. It allows the usual winners to lose and the usual losers to win. It gives racial minorities the chance to shed the role of influencer or gadfly and stand in the shoes of the majority."
She's right, and not just about her favored groups. For instance, Mormons (not a group Gerken highlights) are a national minority. But they are a Utah majority. Hence, Utah takes on Mormon characteristics. It's no theocracy, but it is more representative and distinctive. In areas where Latinos or blacks are the majority, what's so terrible about having institutions that reflect their values?
And, let them all live by their mistakes as well. In San Francisco, which Gerken touts as a haven for "dissenters," they translate their values into law. I think much of what passes for wise policy in San Francisco is idiotic, but it bothers me less than it would if Nancy Pelosi succeeded in making all of America like San Francisco.
I don't see eye to eye with Gerken on everything, and I suspect she would be reluctant to push the welfare state downward. (Public employees in Galveston, Texas, for instance, are not part of the Social Security system.)
Still, I'm delighted her essay has received respectful treatment on the left. A left-right federalist compromise would make America a happier, freer, more prosperous and interesting country. It would also dethrone those in both parties who think they know what's best for more than 300 million Americans.
Source: Townhall
Comment:
This Federalism referred to above is supported by the Constitution and the 10th Amendment. If we could pare down the federal government to be constitutionally compliant, we wouldn’t have any federal laws or federal departments or agencies except those authorized by the U.S. Constitution. Closing those federal groups would result in an annual savings of $1.6 trillion a year. That is the way to balance the budget. The states would become responsible for these functions and they already have groups to do that. More importantly, the President couldn’t sell us down the river to the U.N.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Push Back on Greenies
Big Green Wants a Repeal of Industrial Revolution
by Marita Noon
Environmentalists would have everyone believe that oil, gas, and coal—all fossil fuels—are at the base of much of the world’s ills. Nuclear is no better. They even oppose hydropower, wind energy, and commercial solar. Yet, they claim the high ground and position themselves as the moral authority. What would the world look like if they were setting truly setting energy policy rather than merely influencing it?
An in-depth study of environmental groups’ energy-related goals as posted on their websites’ shows that there is not an energy project they like. In short, they want to “kill,” “block,” and “deny.” The only thing they want to expand is moratoriums.
If environmentalists are in charge, expect these changes to American life:
Transportation
Most Americans have the freedom to come and go in their individual cars as they choose. A survey found that 91% of Americans consider their cars to be a necessity, not a luxury. Yet environmental extremists are actively working to stop or prevent drilling for oil and gas. They also aim to shut down coal-fueled power plants and oppose nuclear energy. With a reduced capacity for electricity and transportation, our lifestyle, as we know it, ceases to exist.
Modern Conveniences
The same survey found that most Americans consider things like microwaves, air conditioning and heating, computers, and cell phones to be a necessity. However, in a limited-fuel, environmentally controlled society, these items would have to go. They all require electricity—as do electric cars. Additionally, each of these “necessities” is made from plastic and plastic is typically made from hydrocarbons.
Health
Like modern conveniences, our health is heavily dependent on both energy and plastics. If you have been in a doctor’s office or hospital lately, you know that even taking your temperature requires electricity and plastics. Today’s extreme regulations could have an adverse impact on our health.
Housing
Without abundant electricity to purify water and pump it into your home and remove and process waste matter, you couldn’t live there. You’d need to move to a location near a fresh water source. Additionally, many environmental groups want to block the cutting of trees—making the construction of new homes near a potential fresh water source virtually impossible.
We all want clean air, fresh water, and a safe food supply, but stopping, opposing, denying, and blocking are not the ways to get it.
Huge strides have been made since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Despite increases in the typical activities that produce pollution, America is much cleaner now than it was twenty years ago. Since 1970, our population has increased and our energy consumption has gone up. We drive more miles each year. At the same time, our American ingenuity has been at work generating an increase in our Gross National Product. Environmentalists want you to believe that pollution has also increased. However, the truth is that, despite this growth, our aggregate emissions are approximately half of what they were.
Michael Economides, author of Energy and Climate Wars says, “The US is certainly one of the cleanest, more environmentally responsible nations in the world. Virtually no European country can boast cleaner waters, more pristine rural landscapes or air quality.”
We need exploration and innovation in America. We need to tap into energy sources currently—or in the process of being made—off limits in America by the Endangered Species Act or by plans to lock up resources under the guise of a national monument. When you think about it, energy makes America great—and we do it in a manner cleaner and safer than anywhere else on the planet.
First of a three-part series of excerpts from Energy Freedom by Marita Noon originally published in the Washington Examiner
Source: Townhall 3/20/12
Comment:
We need to remove support for politicians who the Greenies would like to retain in office and push back on initiatives like T-SPLOST that the Greenies support. The scam is over. There is no man-made global warming. We need to double our oil and gas production and keep our hydro and coal-fired energy generation. We need to remove most functions from the federal government, close most federal departments and agencies and give them to the states. We need to give all federal land back to the states to put into productive use.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
by Marita Noon
Environmentalists would have everyone believe that oil, gas, and coal—all fossil fuels—are at the base of much of the world’s ills. Nuclear is no better. They even oppose hydropower, wind energy, and commercial solar. Yet, they claim the high ground and position themselves as the moral authority. What would the world look like if they were setting truly setting energy policy rather than merely influencing it?
An in-depth study of environmental groups’ energy-related goals as posted on their websites’ shows that there is not an energy project they like. In short, they want to “kill,” “block,” and “deny.” The only thing they want to expand is moratoriums.
If environmentalists are in charge, expect these changes to American life:
Transportation
Most Americans have the freedom to come and go in their individual cars as they choose. A survey found that 91% of Americans consider their cars to be a necessity, not a luxury. Yet environmental extremists are actively working to stop or prevent drilling for oil and gas. They also aim to shut down coal-fueled power plants and oppose nuclear energy. With a reduced capacity for electricity and transportation, our lifestyle, as we know it, ceases to exist.
Modern Conveniences
The same survey found that most Americans consider things like microwaves, air conditioning and heating, computers, and cell phones to be a necessity. However, in a limited-fuel, environmentally controlled society, these items would have to go. They all require electricity—as do electric cars. Additionally, each of these “necessities” is made from plastic and plastic is typically made from hydrocarbons.
Health
Like modern conveniences, our health is heavily dependent on both energy and plastics. If you have been in a doctor’s office or hospital lately, you know that even taking your temperature requires electricity and plastics. Today’s extreme regulations could have an adverse impact on our health.
Housing
Without abundant electricity to purify water and pump it into your home and remove and process waste matter, you couldn’t live there. You’d need to move to a location near a fresh water source. Additionally, many environmental groups want to block the cutting of trees—making the construction of new homes near a potential fresh water source virtually impossible.
We all want clean air, fresh water, and a safe food supply, but stopping, opposing, denying, and blocking are not the ways to get it.
Huge strides have been made since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Despite increases in the typical activities that produce pollution, America is much cleaner now than it was twenty years ago. Since 1970, our population has increased and our energy consumption has gone up. We drive more miles each year. At the same time, our American ingenuity has been at work generating an increase in our Gross National Product. Environmentalists want you to believe that pollution has also increased. However, the truth is that, despite this growth, our aggregate emissions are approximately half of what they were.
Michael Economides, author of Energy and Climate Wars says, “The US is certainly one of the cleanest, more environmentally responsible nations in the world. Virtually no European country can boast cleaner waters, more pristine rural landscapes or air quality.”
We need exploration and innovation in America. We need to tap into energy sources currently—or in the process of being made—off limits in America by the Endangered Species Act or by plans to lock up resources under the guise of a national monument. When you think about it, energy makes America great—and we do it in a manner cleaner and safer than anywhere else on the planet.
First of a three-part series of excerpts from Energy Freedom by Marita Noon originally published in the Washington Examiner
Source: Townhall 3/20/12
Comment:
We need to remove support for politicians who the Greenies would like to retain in office and push back on initiatives like T-SPLOST that the Greenies support. The scam is over. There is no man-made global warming. We need to double our oil and gas production and keep our hydro and coal-fired energy generation. We need to remove most functions from the federal government, close most federal departments and agencies and give them to the states. We need to give all federal land back to the states to put into productive use.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Keystone Pipeline Goes Forward
TransCanada moves forward to build the southern half of Keystone XL pipeline…Obama says “OK” by Rebecca DiFede
In Jan., Obama made a big show of vehemently denying requests to build a Keystone XL pipeline, which would have created thousands of jobs and helped restore to the sluggish economy.
The funny thing is, Obama only controls three inches of the Keystone pipeline — the three inches that cross the US/Canada border. The majority of the pipeline, existing from the border to Alberta and from Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX is out of his jurisdiction.
However despite that fact, he vetoed the entire project because he (and his environmental supporters) believe that those jobs, since they are going to support oil instead of his preferred “green” energy, the jobs are now “dirty”. He refused to even consider it, and even lobbied the Senate against it.
Last month TransCanada, the company behind the project revealed plans to move forward with the southern half of the Keystone pipeline without Obama’s permission. They don’t need his approval to start building in Cushing, which just so happens to be the president’s third stop on his two day energy tour.
Coincidence?
On Thursday, President Obama has decided to “approve” the move, and release plans to supposedly cut the red tape and expedite construction of the pipeline. What a sudden change of heart from our illustrious president, especially because of the ardent public outrage he originally displayed for the issue.
As recently as Mar. 8, the president was lobbying against the GOP fast track bill for the Keystone XL pipeline and now, a mere 22 days later, he is giving the green light to the southern portion of the exact same project. One that, as we’ve already established, doesn’t need his approval to proceed.
I suppose in this pre-election time, Obama wants all the attention he can get, and this stunt is surely an attempt to win him favor with some on-the-fence Democrats. By giving a very public thumbs up to this project, he hopes that when it is finalized, he will get credit for making good on one of his promises. As if his too-little-too-late announcement is going to allow everyone to forget how much time and money he spent arguing for this project’s dismissal.
All ploys aside, this is a low move, even for him. President Obama’s seeming endorsement of TransCanada’s decision was summarized best by Brendan Buck, Press Secretary to Speaker John Boehner, who said: “This is like a governor personally issuing a fishing license.” Or a mother telling her adult son not to get a tattoo, only to give her approval when he comes home with one.
Neither has the right to issue such an approval, and knows it, but feels the need to assert dominance anyway, as if to say “I see what you’re doing over there. No, I don’t like it. But hey, since you’re doing it anyway, who am I to stop you?”
The president just wants to focus attention on him, especially in the wake of the primaries, and he figured the best way to do it was to ride TransCanada’s bandwagon all the way to the polls. However this does pose one problem, he has become that which he has always aspired not to be: a flip-flopper.
Sure, he’s gone back and forth on issues before, all politicians do. But never before in his presidency has he gone on such a direct public tirade against an issue, only to give it credence once he realized he couldn’t stop it from being done.
He cannot stand to not have control of every aspect of America, and when TransCanada announced their plans to trudge into Oklahoma without him, waving their tails in his face as he visited the state, he had to fight back. He knew they didn’t need him, and feeling left out he gave them his “blessing”, framed by his ever-present Cheshire cat grin. After all, in this administration, everyone’s mad here.
Source: Rebecca DiFede is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government.
In Jan., Obama made a big show of vehemently denying requests to build a Keystone XL pipeline, which would have created thousands of jobs and helped restore to the sluggish economy.
The funny thing is, Obama only controls three inches of the Keystone pipeline — the three inches that cross the US/Canada border. The majority of the pipeline, existing from the border to Alberta and from Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX is out of his jurisdiction.
However despite that fact, he vetoed the entire project because he (and his environmental supporters) believe that those jobs, since they are going to support oil instead of his preferred “green” energy, the jobs are now “dirty”. He refused to even consider it, and even lobbied the Senate against it.
Last month TransCanada, the company behind the project revealed plans to move forward with the southern half of the Keystone pipeline without Obama’s permission. They don’t need his approval to start building in Cushing, which just so happens to be the president’s third stop on his two day energy tour.
Coincidence?
On Thursday, President Obama has decided to “approve” the move, and release plans to supposedly cut the red tape and expedite construction of the pipeline. What a sudden change of heart from our illustrious president, especially because of the ardent public outrage he originally displayed for the issue.
As recently as Mar. 8, the president was lobbying against the GOP fast track bill for the Keystone XL pipeline and now, a mere 22 days later, he is giving the green light to the southern portion of the exact same project. One that, as we’ve already established, doesn’t need his approval to proceed.
I suppose in this pre-election time, Obama wants all the attention he can get, and this stunt is surely an attempt to win him favor with some on-the-fence Democrats. By giving a very public thumbs up to this project, he hopes that when it is finalized, he will get credit for making good on one of his promises. As if his too-little-too-late announcement is going to allow everyone to forget how much time and money he spent arguing for this project’s dismissal.
All ploys aside, this is a low move, even for him. President Obama’s seeming endorsement of TransCanada’s decision was summarized best by Brendan Buck, Press Secretary to Speaker John Boehner, who said: “This is like a governor personally issuing a fishing license.” Or a mother telling her adult son not to get a tattoo, only to give her approval when he comes home with one.
Neither has the right to issue such an approval, and knows it, but feels the need to assert dominance anyway, as if to say “I see what you’re doing over there. No, I don’t like it. But hey, since you’re doing it anyway, who am I to stop you?”
The president just wants to focus attention on him, especially in the wake of the primaries, and he figured the best way to do it was to ride TransCanada’s bandwagon all the way to the polls. However this does pose one problem, he has become that which he has always aspired not to be: a flip-flopper.
Sure, he’s gone back and forth on issues before, all politicians do. But never before in his presidency has he gone on such a direct public tirade against an issue, only to give it credence once he realized he couldn’t stop it from being done.
He cannot stand to not have control of every aspect of America, and when TransCanada announced their plans to trudge into Oklahoma without him, waving their tails in his face as he visited the state, he had to fight back. He knew they didn’t need him, and feeling left out he gave them his “blessing”, framed by his ever-present Cheshire cat grin. After all, in this administration, everyone’s mad here.
Source: Rebecca DiFede is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The Crash the Dollar Club
Kevin Freeman: Terrorists, Nations Plot Attack to Doom Dollar
Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012 By Forrest Jones and Kathleen Walter
Terrorist organizations and sovereign governments have attacked the U.S. financial system in the past and may do it again to destroy the U.S. dollar's status as global reserve currency, says author Kevin Freeman.
Sovereign wealth funds and even terrorist groups make trades using complex and often opaque strategies with tools like credit defaults and naked short selling to disrupt U.S. markets.
"There are a number of groups that want to see the dollar removed as the reserve currency of the world. These include major players like Brazil, Russia, India and China, but it also includes the sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and it includes some terrorist groups," Freeman told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.
"We've seen evidence of a terrorist attack being planned to remove the dollar as a reserve status, and the implications for that are severe. They could really harm our economy," said Freeman, CEO of Freeman Global Holdings and author of "Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why it Can Happen Again."
Such financial attacks hit around Sept. 11, 2008, just prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and part of a possible plan to boost Barack Obama's chances of winning the White House, which hostile elements viewed as the more preferred candidate at the time.
That's probably why the government doesn't want to go after threats to the financial system more aggressively, says Freeman, who says he has brought his evidence to intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies.
"I was shocked when I brought forth this information that I wasn't called by seven agencies to come in and tell us what you know. They are not doing anything, that I can tell, to protect us from these attacks," he says.
Perhaps the administration doesn't want to create a panic or appear the favored party among the country's enemies.
"If you recognize that in 2008 our stock market was purposely attacked and that was part of the crash if not the trigger point for the crash, and it happened on Sept. 11, 2008, right before the election, when people start to wonder, was this purpose to put Barack Obama in the White House — I have not made those claims, but I have been told by administration officials that they are very afraid of the American people coming to that conclusion."
According to Freeman, terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had materials in his possession outlining strategies to damage the European economy and later that of the U.S. at the time of his capture and assassination.
"It was using George Soros-style techniques to bring down the financial markets and to destroy the currency," Freeman says, referring to the legendary financier who broke the Bank of England trading against the pound in 1992.
"The implications are we become Greece much quicker than naturally would because of a terrorist attack."
Proper use of financial regulation could help.
Too many regulations slapped on the economy are hampering small businesses and hiring, while trading in complex credit derivatives left unchecked put the country at risk in the first place.
"I think we need to de-regulate small businesses as much possible, but if we see instruments like financial weapons of mass destruction, as described by Warren Buffett them referencing credit default swaps, those need some level of regulation," Freeman says.
"I was talking to some conservative economists, and even they feel we went too far repealing Glass-Steagall," Freeman says, referring to repealing legislation that separated commercial and investment banking.
Current regulation like the Dodd-Frank financial reform won't work either but rather, coordinated efforts from financial oversight bodies with security and intelligence agencies to protect the vast U.S. financial system are needed.
After all, it doesn't take much to reveal weaknesses in the system.
"When we had a flash crash on May 6, 2010, and the Dow dropped 900 points in six minutes, that's indicative of the vulnerability. There are enemies in the United States that recognize that vulnerability and want to take advantage of it and are pursuing it," Freeman says.
"Just like we are protecting ourselves from cyber threats, we need to protect ourselves from financial attack, and that's the central message."
Source: Newsmax
Comment:
It’s alarming to hear that our current federal agencies are not tuned in on how conflict of interest exists in the globalist camp. We need to shore up our defenses against a Soros-type attach on the dollar. We also need to cut spending and stop printing and borrowing. So far, our own government spenders and money printers are doing all they can to crash the dollar. I’m not surprised that their globalist friends have investment tools to help push us over the cliff. . On October 2, 2011 I posted “The Turnup Plan”. It sounds like Kevin Freeman is on to it.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012 By Forrest Jones and Kathleen Walter
Terrorist organizations and sovereign governments have attacked the U.S. financial system in the past and may do it again to destroy the U.S. dollar's status as global reserve currency, says author Kevin Freeman.
Sovereign wealth funds and even terrorist groups make trades using complex and often opaque strategies with tools like credit defaults and naked short selling to disrupt U.S. markets.
"There are a number of groups that want to see the dollar removed as the reserve currency of the world. These include major players like Brazil, Russia, India and China, but it also includes the sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and it includes some terrorist groups," Freeman told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.
"We've seen evidence of a terrorist attack being planned to remove the dollar as a reserve status, and the implications for that are severe. They could really harm our economy," said Freeman, CEO of Freeman Global Holdings and author of "Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why it Can Happen Again."
Such financial attacks hit around Sept. 11, 2008, just prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and part of a possible plan to boost Barack Obama's chances of winning the White House, which hostile elements viewed as the more preferred candidate at the time.
That's probably why the government doesn't want to go after threats to the financial system more aggressively, says Freeman, who says he has brought his evidence to intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies.
"I was shocked when I brought forth this information that I wasn't called by seven agencies to come in and tell us what you know. They are not doing anything, that I can tell, to protect us from these attacks," he says.
Perhaps the administration doesn't want to create a panic or appear the favored party among the country's enemies.
"If you recognize that in 2008 our stock market was purposely attacked and that was part of the crash if not the trigger point for the crash, and it happened on Sept. 11, 2008, right before the election, when people start to wonder, was this purpose to put Barack Obama in the White House — I have not made those claims, but I have been told by administration officials that they are very afraid of the American people coming to that conclusion."
According to Freeman, terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had materials in his possession outlining strategies to damage the European economy and later that of the U.S. at the time of his capture and assassination.
"It was using George Soros-style techniques to bring down the financial markets and to destroy the currency," Freeman says, referring to the legendary financier who broke the Bank of England trading against the pound in 1992.
"The implications are we become Greece much quicker than naturally would because of a terrorist attack."
Proper use of financial regulation could help.
Too many regulations slapped on the economy are hampering small businesses and hiring, while trading in complex credit derivatives left unchecked put the country at risk in the first place.
"I think we need to de-regulate small businesses as much possible, but if we see instruments like financial weapons of mass destruction, as described by Warren Buffett them referencing credit default swaps, those need some level of regulation," Freeman says.
"I was talking to some conservative economists, and even they feel we went too far repealing Glass-Steagall," Freeman says, referring to repealing legislation that separated commercial and investment banking.
Current regulation like the Dodd-Frank financial reform won't work either but rather, coordinated efforts from financial oversight bodies with security and intelligence agencies to protect the vast U.S. financial system are needed.
After all, it doesn't take much to reveal weaknesses in the system.
"When we had a flash crash on May 6, 2010, and the Dow dropped 900 points in six minutes, that's indicative of the vulnerability. There are enemies in the United States that recognize that vulnerability and want to take advantage of it and are pursuing it," Freeman says.
"Just like we are protecting ourselves from cyber threats, we need to protect ourselves from financial attack, and that's the central message."
Source: Newsmax
Comment:
It’s alarming to hear that our current federal agencies are not tuned in on how conflict of interest exists in the globalist camp. We need to shore up our defenses against a Soros-type attach on the dollar. We also need to cut spending and stop printing and borrowing. So far, our own government spenders and money printers are doing all they can to crash the dollar. I’m not surprised that their globalist friends have investment tools to help push us over the cliff. . On October 2, 2011 I posted “The Turnup Plan”. It sounds like Kevin Freeman is on to it.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Islam Promoted in U.S. Schoolbooks
WHAT THE? NOW FACTS ERASED FROM SCHOOLBOOKS
You won't believe what's intentionally left out from key U.S. date
by DREW ZAHN
Who perpetrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – a group of men merely fighting “for a cause,” or a band of radical Muslims bent on violent jihad?
According to a new, comprehensive study of 6th-12th grade textbooks used by schools across the country, America’s children are being taught a very different answer to that question than many alive to witness 9/11 remember.
The non-profit organization ACT! for America Education studied 38 textbooks from popular publishers like McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin, for example, to determine whether American schoolchildren are being taught the truth about Islam and its role in 9/11.
The report, titled “Education or Indoctrination? The Treatment of Islam in 6th through 12th Grade American Textbooks,” compares what it found in the textbooks with 275 historical sources, listing 375 footnoted citations, to conclude that America’s textbooks are laced with “historical revisionism.”
“This report shines a bright light on a pattern of errors, omissions and bias in the textbooks reviewed,” explained ACT! for America Education founder Brigitte Gabriel in an email. “To give you just one example of the errors our research uncovered, in discussing the 9/11 attacks, the textbooks typically fail to mention the perpetrators were Muslims or that they acted in the cause of Islamic jihad. In one book the terrorists are portrayed as people fighting for a cause.
“In just a few years after Sept. 11,” she continues, “the history of what happened on that tragic day was rewritten in our school textbooks. Omitting this vital information, that jihad was the motivation for the attacks, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for today’s young teens, who don’t remember 9/11, to really understand what happened that day – and why.”
According to the executive summary of the report, “The full reportreveals a pattern of historical revisionism, omissions and bias in the presentation of all aspects devoted to Islam in these textbooks. These aspects include its theology and doctrines, its role as a world religion, its ongoing struggle with Western tradition and its intrinsic anti-Semitism.”
The summary continues, “Textbook errors identified in the report range from egregiously false historical statements to significant omissions and subtle half-truths. Some are blatant and obvious, others are subtle and deceptive. The errors in these textbooks are not grammatical or typographical. They are substantive, significant and often repetitive.”
For example, the report notes the textbook “World History: Patterns of Interaction,” published by McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin in 2007, glosses over the violent birth of Islam and paints its founder, Muhammad, in a glowing light.
“In Medina, Muhammad displayed impressive leadership skills,” the textbook asserts. “He fashioned an agreement that joined his own people with the Arabs and Jews of Medina as a single community. These groups accepted Muhammad as a political leader. As a religious leader, he drew many more converts, who found his message appealing.”
But did Muhammad win converts among and build a peace accord with the Jews? The study’s founders cite several sources and recorded histories in asserting this description is a bald-faced lie.
“This language is a gross falsification of the relationship between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina,” the report states. “Muhammad … expelled two of the Jewish tribes from Medina and destroyed the third, beheading the men and selling the women and children into slavery. This important and essential historical fact of the Medinan period is commonly omitted in the textbooks reviewed, and it is impossible for students to accurately understand the rise of Islam without it.”
The report also questioned the textbooks’ descriptions of jihad.
“An Islamic term that is often misunderstood is jihad,” asserts Houghton Mifflin’s 2003 textbook “Across the Centuries.” “The term means ‘to struggle,’ to do one’s best to resist temptation and overcome evil. Under certain conditions, the struggle to overcome evil may require action. The Qur’an and Sunna allow self-defense and participation in military conflict, but restrict it to the right to defend against aggression and persecution.”
“The term jihad is, indeed, ‘often misunderstood,’” the report replies, “primarily because faulty definitions like this are prevalent in academia and the media.
“First, this passage redundantly and incorrectly asserts that jihad warfare is solely defensive in nature,” the report continues. “According to the Qur’an , the mandate of jihad includes aggressive warfare for the explicit purpose of making Islam supreme over the entire world. For instance, Surah 9:5 commands Muslims to ‘fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, And seize them, beleaguer them, And lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)’ (parenthetical in original). Surah 9:29 commands Muslims to make war upon ‘People of the Book [Christians and Jews], Until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, And feel themselves subdued.’”
The report’s executive summary concludes, “It is clear that the textbooks examined throughout this report contain extensive amounts of material that is seriously historically flawed and often unmistakably biased.”
Specifically, the report details dozens of ways in which it contends the textbooks stray from accurately teaching about Islam, including the following list, quoted directly from the report’s summary:
•The doctrine of jihad is omitted, incorrectly defined, inaccurately described, or understated.
•Faulty description of women’s rights under Islam: The oppressive and discriminatory nature of Shari’a law with respect to women is omitted, mischaracterized or understated.
•Omission or minimization of the Islamic slave trade, in sharp contrast with what is typically an extensive and appropriately critical examination of the Atlantic slave trade operated by Europeans.
•Aggrandizement and elevation of Muhammad’s character that is contradicted by accepted historical facts.
•Omission or minimization of Muslim conquest and imperialism, in sharp contrast with what is typically an extensive and appropriately critical examination of European and other imperialism.
•False claim of Islam’s historical tolerance of Jews and Christians.
•Misrepresentation of Shari’a Law in such areas as its applicability to non-Muslims and the separation of church and state.
•False presentation of the Crusades as the cause of the animosity between Christianity and Islam.
•Faulty historical narrative of the Crusades. Muslims in the Holy Land are commonly depicted as innocent victims of unprovoked aggression who were defending “their” lands against Christian invaders, rather than what is historically accurate: (1) that Muslims invaded and conquered the Holy Land centuries prior to the Crusades; (2) that Christians and Jews were victims of Muslim conquest and aggression centuries prior to the launching of the Crusades; and (3) that the Crusades were launched to wrest back control of the Holy Land from the Muslim invaders and conquerors.
•Chronological revisionism of the historical development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which incorrectly portrays Islam as preceding Judaism and Christianity and the Muslims/Arabs as the indigenous people in the Holy Land, resulting in the delegitizimation of Israel.
•Treatment of Islamism as though it has no origins within classical Islam and Islam’s Holy Books.
•Islamist Holocaust revisionism that attributes the creation of Israel to world guilt over the Holocaust and incorrectly maintains that Arabs were forced to give up land for the survivors of the Holocaust.
•Omission of the fact that the United Nations created a two-state partition for Palestine, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs.
•Omission of the fact that the Arabs refused to accept the offer of an independent Arab state contained in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
•False claim of Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem.
•Omission of the fact that the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist was and remains a verbal recognition only, contradicted by the unrevised PLO charter.
•Inaccurate claim that most Middle Eastern terrorist groups have roots in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
•Omission of the fact that Islamic jihadists target Americans not only for their support of Israel but also for what they consider the “decadent nature” of Western way of life that threatens the spread of Islam throughout the world.
•Failure to explain why the Islamic jihadists targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and to identify the fourth target as the White House.
“Perhaps the greatest disservice done to students,” the report concludes, “is the net effect of the accumulation of these errors — the creation of a faulty historical narrative that not only misrepresents Islam but creates an inaccurate comparison between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and between the Muslim world and the West. Regardless of the issue – slavery, conquest and imperialism, the Crusades, the Arab-Israeli conflict, to name a few – Islam and the Muslim world are not generally held to the same rigor of historical analysis that the textbooks apply to Christianity, Judaism and the West.”
But to many Americans, the politically correct nature of handling 9/11 may be the most surprising.
The report, for example, quotes the textbook “Horizons,” published by Harcourt in 2005: “On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States was the target of a horrible act of terrorism, or violence to further a cause.”
The report explains, “The statement that the 9/11 attack was carried out to ‘further a cause’ is left undefined. There is no mention that the ’cause’ was Islamic jihad.”
It continues, “Rarely are the terrorists identified as Muslims, and the jihadist motivations for their actions are omitted. Omitting these two critical facts leaves students with an incomplete, and thus inaccurate, understanding as to why 9/11 happened.”
ACT! for America Education claims it has sent the executive summary of its finding to over 70,000 state and local school board members nationwide. In addition, the executive summary contains a list of recommended actions on its final pages, for those who, according to Gabriel, want to “wake up America to what this report has uncovered.”
Source: World News Daily
Comment:
De-propagandizing public schools should begin with closing the federal department of education and refusing to allow the Congress to mandate any educational legislation. Then we focus on the states, who receive these responsibilities, to make sure they aren’t going to make the same mistakes. It's clear, we should not buy textbooks from the vendor list we use right now.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party
You won't believe what's intentionally left out from key U.S. date
by DREW ZAHN
Who perpetrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – a group of men merely fighting “for a cause,” or a band of radical Muslims bent on violent jihad?
According to a new, comprehensive study of 6th-12th grade textbooks used by schools across the country, America’s children are being taught a very different answer to that question than many alive to witness 9/11 remember.
The non-profit organization ACT! for America Education studied 38 textbooks from popular publishers like McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin, for example, to determine whether American schoolchildren are being taught the truth about Islam and its role in 9/11.
The report, titled “Education or Indoctrination? The Treatment of Islam in 6th through 12th Grade American Textbooks,” compares what it found in the textbooks with 275 historical sources, listing 375 footnoted citations, to conclude that America’s textbooks are laced with “historical revisionism.”
“This report shines a bright light on a pattern of errors, omissions and bias in the textbooks reviewed,” explained ACT! for America Education founder Brigitte Gabriel in an email. “To give you just one example of the errors our research uncovered, in discussing the 9/11 attacks, the textbooks typically fail to mention the perpetrators were Muslims or that they acted in the cause of Islamic jihad. In one book the terrorists are portrayed as people fighting for a cause.
“In just a few years after Sept. 11,” she continues, “the history of what happened on that tragic day was rewritten in our school textbooks. Omitting this vital information, that jihad was the motivation for the attacks, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for today’s young teens, who don’t remember 9/11, to really understand what happened that day – and why.”
According to the executive summary of the report, “The full reportreveals a pattern of historical revisionism, omissions and bias in the presentation of all aspects devoted to Islam in these textbooks. These aspects include its theology and doctrines, its role as a world religion, its ongoing struggle with Western tradition and its intrinsic anti-Semitism.”
The summary continues, “Textbook errors identified in the report range from egregiously false historical statements to significant omissions and subtle half-truths. Some are blatant and obvious, others are subtle and deceptive. The errors in these textbooks are not grammatical or typographical. They are substantive, significant and often repetitive.”
For example, the report notes the textbook “World History: Patterns of Interaction,” published by McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin in 2007, glosses over the violent birth of Islam and paints its founder, Muhammad, in a glowing light.
“In Medina, Muhammad displayed impressive leadership skills,” the textbook asserts. “He fashioned an agreement that joined his own people with the Arabs and Jews of Medina as a single community. These groups accepted Muhammad as a political leader. As a religious leader, he drew many more converts, who found his message appealing.”
But did Muhammad win converts among and build a peace accord with the Jews? The study’s founders cite several sources and recorded histories in asserting this description is a bald-faced lie.
“This language is a gross falsification of the relationship between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina,” the report states. “Muhammad … expelled two of the Jewish tribes from Medina and destroyed the third, beheading the men and selling the women and children into slavery. This important and essential historical fact of the Medinan period is commonly omitted in the textbooks reviewed, and it is impossible for students to accurately understand the rise of Islam without it.”
The report also questioned the textbooks’ descriptions of jihad.
“An Islamic term that is often misunderstood is jihad,” asserts Houghton Mifflin’s 2003 textbook “Across the Centuries.” “The term means ‘to struggle,’ to do one’s best to resist temptation and overcome evil. Under certain conditions, the struggle to overcome evil may require action. The Qur’an and Sunna allow self-defense and participation in military conflict, but restrict it to the right to defend against aggression and persecution.”
“The term jihad is, indeed, ‘often misunderstood,’” the report replies, “primarily because faulty definitions like this are prevalent in academia and the media.
“First, this passage redundantly and incorrectly asserts that jihad warfare is solely defensive in nature,” the report continues. “According to the Qur’an , the mandate of jihad includes aggressive warfare for the explicit purpose of making Islam supreme over the entire world. For instance, Surah 9:5 commands Muslims to ‘fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, And seize them, beleaguer them, And lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)’ (parenthetical in original). Surah 9:29 commands Muslims to make war upon ‘People of the Book [Christians and Jews], Until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, And feel themselves subdued.’”
The report’s executive summary concludes, “It is clear that the textbooks examined throughout this report contain extensive amounts of material that is seriously historically flawed and often unmistakably biased.”
Specifically, the report details dozens of ways in which it contends the textbooks stray from accurately teaching about Islam, including the following list, quoted directly from the report’s summary:
•The doctrine of jihad is omitted, incorrectly defined, inaccurately described, or understated.
•Faulty description of women’s rights under Islam: The oppressive and discriminatory nature of Shari’a law with respect to women is omitted, mischaracterized or understated.
•Omission or minimization of the Islamic slave trade, in sharp contrast with what is typically an extensive and appropriately critical examination of the Atlantic slave trade operated by Europeans.
•Aggrandizement and elevation of Muhammad’s character that is contradicted by accepted historical facts.
•Omission or minimization of Muslim conquest and imperialism, in sharp contrast with what is typically an extensive and appropriately critical examination of European and other imperialism.
•False claim of Islam’s historical tolerance of Jews and Christians.
•Misrepresentation of Shari’a Law in such areas as its applicability to non-Muslims and the separation of church and state.
•False presentation of the Crusades as the cause of the animosity between Christianity and Islam.
•Faulty historical narrative of the Crusades. Muslims in the Holy Land are commonly depicted as innocent victims of unprovoked aggression who were defending “their” lands against Christian invaders, rather than what is historically accurate: (1) that Muslims invaded and conquered the Holy Land centuries prior to the Crusades; (2) that Christians and Jews were victims of Muslim conquest and aggression centuries prior to the launching of the Crusades; and (3) that the Crusades were launched to wrest back control of the Holy Land from the Muslim invaders and conquerors.
•Chronological revisionism of the historical development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which incorrectly portrays Islam as preceding Judaism and Christianity and the Muslims/Arabs as the indigenous people in the Holy Land, resulting in the delegitizimation of Israel.
•Treatment of Islamism as though it has no origins within classical Islam and Islam’s Holy Books.
•Islamist Holocaust revisionism that attributes the creation of Israel to world guilt over the Holocaust and incorrectly maintains that Arabs were forced to give up land for the survivors of the Holocaust.
•Omission of the fact that the United Nations created a two-state partition for Palestine, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs.
•Omission of the fact that the Arabs refused to accept the offer of an independent Arab state contained in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
•False claim of Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem.
•Omission of the fact that the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist was and remains a verbal recognition only, contradicted by the unrevised PLO charter.
•Inaccurate claim that most Middle Eastern terrorist groups have roots in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
•Omission of the fact that Islamic jihadists target Americans not only for their support of Israel but also for what they consider the “decadent nature” of Western way of life that threatens the spread of Islam throughout the world.
•Failure to explain why the Islamic jihadists targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and to identify the fourth target as the White House.
“Perhaps the greatest disservice done to students,” the report concludes, “is the net effect of the accumulation of these errors — the creation of a faulty historical narrative that not only misrepresents Islam but creates an inaccurate comparison between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and between the Muslim world and the West. Regardless of the issue – slavery, conquest and imperialism, the Crusades, the Arab-Israeli conflict, to name a few – Islam and the Muslim world are not generally held to the same rigor of historical analysis that the textbooks apply to Christianity, Judaism and the West.”
But to many Americans, the politically correct nature of handling 9/11 may be the most surprising.
The report, for example, quotes the textbook “Horizons,” published by Harcourt in 2005: “On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States was the target of a horrible act of terrorism, or violence to further a cause.”
The report explains, “The statement that the 9/11 attack was carried out to ‘further a cause’ is left undefined. There is no mention that the ’cause’ was Islamic jihad.”
It continues, “Rarely are the terrorists identified as Muslims, and the jihadist motivations for their actions are omitted. Omitting these two critical facts leaves students with an incomplete, and thus inaccurate, understanding as to why 9/11 happened.”
ACT! for America Education claims it has sent the executive summary of its finding to over 70,000 state and local school board members nationwide. In addition, the executive summary contains a list of recommended actions on its final pages, for those who, according to Gabriel, want to “wake up America to what this report has uncovered.”
Source: World News Daily
Comment:
De-propagandizing public schools should begin with closing the federal department of education and refusing to allow the Congress to mandate any educational legislation. Then we focus on the states, who receive these responsibilities, to make sure they aren’t going to make the same mistakes. It's clear, we should not buy textbooks from the vendor list we use right now.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party
The Postman, Obama and Ayers
POSTMAN: AYERS FAMILY PUT 'FOREIGNER' OBAMA THROUGH SCHOOL Claims he met young Barack who boasted he would someday be president
by JEROME R. CORSI
CHICAGO, Ill. – Did the parents of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers help finance Barack Obama’s Harvard education?
Did Ayers’ mother believe Obama was a foreign student?
And was the young Obama convinced at the time – long before he even entered politics – that he was going to become president of the United States?
A retired U.S. Postal Service carrier who delivered mail to Tom and Mary Ayers in a Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s and claims to have met Obama in front of the Ayers home emphatically says yes to all three questions.
Allen Hulton, who was commended for 39 years of honorable service with the USPS, has given a sworn affidavit to investigators commissioned by Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio to determine whether Obama is eligible for Arizona’s 2012 election ballot. Hulton has recorded about three hours of video interviews with WND.
Hulton says that in conversations with Mary Ayers while on his route he learned of the couple’s enthusiasm and support for a black foreign student. One bright, warm Chicagoland day, he recounts, he met the student who fit Mary Ayers’ description in front of the Ayers home in Glen Ellyn, Ill. That young man, Hulton is convinced, was Barack Obama.
Hulton delivered mail to the Ayers, who are both deceased, when he was stationed at the post office in Glen Ellyn, an upper-middle class suburb 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, from late 1986 to 1997. He was a USPS employee from March 28, 1962, through March 30, 2001.(Editor’s note: Although the Ayers family no longer lives there, WND is withholding the Glen Ellyn street address for the sake of the current residents’ privacy.)
“It was a beautiful neighborhood – one of the nicer routes any of the letter carriers would have liked to have had,” Hulton recalls. “It had some large and very beautiful homes.”
As WND reported yesterday, Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers – who he dismissed in a 2008 debate as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” – plagued him in the 2008 presidential campaign and could resurface in this year’s election, as many questions remain.
Young Obama
Over a period of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hulton estimates he spoke with Mary Ayers about 18 to 20 times and once to Tom Ayers, who died in 2007. Mary Ayers died in 2000.
“Sometimes Mary would be out when I delivered the mail, and we would exchange a few words on occasion,” he says, recalling that she liked to talk about her family.
“One day, Mary came to the door when I came up to the house with the mail,” he remembers. “After a greeting, she started enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student they were helping out, and she referred to him as a foreign student.”
Hulton assumed that by “helping” the student, Mary Ayers meant she and her husband were financially supporting the black foreign exchange student with his education.
He says that Mary Ayers told him the student’s name, but that it was a “strange name” that he could not remember, even though at the time it sounded African to him.
“I was taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about him,” Hulton says. “And I believe she said he was from either Kenya or Indonesia, and I favor Indonesia in my recollection.”
WND has reported that when Obama was in Indonesia with his Indonesian stepfather and his mother from ages 6 to10, he was registered in school as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim. He went by the name Barry Soetoro, adopting the surname of his Indonesian stepfather. His mother’s passport listed him with the surname Soebarkah.
Obama refuses to waive privacy rights that would allow the Hawaii Department of Health to release any adoption records that may exist for him.
Even should Obama waive privacy rights, the Hawaii Department of Health might not feel compelled to release any adoption records that may exist. Tight restrictions to vital records have been enacted by the Hawaii State Legislature to seal any public documents pertaining to Obama’s birth records and his adoption status.
If Obama were adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, he may have compromised his eligibility to be president, according to Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, which requires that a president be a “natural-born citizen.”
‘I’m going to be president of the United States’
About a year after discussing with Mary Ayers the foreign student she and her husband were supporting, Hulton recalls meeting a young black male on the sidewalk in front of the Ayers home.
Hulton describes the man as being in his early 20s, noting that he was tall, thin, had a light complexion and that his ears stuck out.
“He greeted me,” Hulton says. “He was very polite, dressed nicely, but informally – slacks and a dress shirt – and he spoke with no accent. Immediately this young black man entered into conversation with me. He told me he had taken the train out from Chicago and had come to thank the Ayers family personally for having helped him with his education.”
Hulton remembers asking the young man what his plans were for the future.
“He looked right at me and told me he was going to be president of the United States,” Hulton says.
“There was a little bit of a grin on his face when he said it – he sounded sure of himself, but not arrogant. I know how people will say things because they have an ambition, but it did not come across that way,” Hulton says. “It came across as if this young black male was telling me he was going to be president, almost as if it were the statement of a scientific fact that had already been determined, as if his being president had been already pre-arranged.”
Hulton says the claim made him speechless.
“I kind of stuttered a response and said that nowadays anything is possible. I wished him good luck with his ambition,” he says.
Immediately, Hulton associated the young black man with the foreign student Mary Ayers had mentioned to him so enthusiastically about a year earlier.
“I remembered the conversation I had with Mary, and I associated this young man with the foreign student she had discussed with me, because Mary said they were supporting this foreign student, and the young black man I met outside the Ayers’ home said he had come to Glen Ellyn to thank the Ayers in person for helping him with his education.”
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hulton observed several news reports detailing the relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, and he recalled the encounter with the young man in front of Tom and Mary Ayers’ home.
“The facial and physical characteristics, as well as candidate Obama’s voice, matched that of the young black male I met in front of the Ayers’ home,” Hulton says in the affidavit he signed Nov. 12, 2011, for Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.
“I am positive that the black male I spoke with in front of the Ayers’ house that day was indeed a young Barack Obama.”
Hulton distinctly recalls that the day he met Obama in front of the Ayers’ residence was a warm, sunny day and that Obama wasn’t wearing a jacket.
Marxist
Hulton recalls that he had one conversation with Tom Ayers, who was retired as CEO and chairman of Commonwealth Edison, shortly after the Ayers family moved into their home in Glen Ellyn.
“He asked me how I liked my job, and he started into what seemed to me a Marxist viewpoint on what it is like for the working man, trying to convince me that working people like me were exploited by their employers,” Hulton remembers of the conversation.
“As an American citizen, I appreciated everything I had, and I was not at war with people who had more than I had,” he says. “It surprised me to hear somebody who had been president of Consolidated Edison talking in these terms.”
Hulton says he got the feeling that Tom Ayers thought he knew more about the plight of the workingman and than he did.
Summer 1989
A likely timeframe for Hulton’s alleged encounter with Obama is the summer of 1989, when Obama was an intern at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, after his first year at Harvard Law School.
Hulton says Obama mentioned to him taking the train. The Metra, a commuter from downtown Chicago, stops at a Glen Ellyn station a little more than a mile from the Ayers’ residence.
Michelle Robinson, Obama’s wife-to-be, was the attorney at the firm assigned to mentor Obama in the summer of 1989.
Bernardine Dohrn also had worked as a paralegal at Sidley Austin, from 1984 through 1988. Dohrn’s 1960s radical activities as a self-described “revolutionary communist” landed her on the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives, and because of her felony conviction, she was not allowed to take the Illinois bar exam.
Widely speculated in Chicago is that Dohrn got the job at Sidley Austin through the influence of her father-in-law, Thomas Ayers, who was one of the law firm’s biggest clients.
Michelle Obama started at the firm in the summer of 1988 and remained there until 1991.
Hulton recalls meeting Dohrn at the home of her in-laws, although his encounters with her were limited to having Dohrn sign for mail addressed to her.
First reported in 2009
Hulton’s account of meeting Obama in suburban Chicago was first reported by California lawyer and political scientist Stephen Diamond in September 2009.
Writing on his blog, Diamond reported that he had interviewed Hulton at length and considered his account credible.
“The statement by Hulton is the first eyewitness account of a possible relationship between Obama and Tom Ayers and the first that dates his relationship with the Ayers family to the mid-1980s,” Diamond wrote.
As early as Oct. 13, 2008, prior to the November 2008 presidential election, Diamond had reported that Obama’s relationship with the Ayers family dated back to 1988. At that time, Obama, as head of the Developing Communities Project, joined the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, the ABCs Coalition. The lobbying alliance aimed to push through Chicago public schools the creation of “Local School Councils,” or LSCs, to oversee teachers and administrators.
“The proposal was very controversial, and groups like Operation PUSH headed by Jesse Jackson did not support it, because many teachers were black – it was one of the first stable middle class careers a black person, and black women in particular, could aspire to in Chicago,” Diamond wrote.
Tom Ayers and Bill Ayers were strong supporters of the LSCs, however, according to Diamond, and Chicago United, a group founded by Tom Ayers, joined ABCs too. Bill Ayers became chairman of ABCs.
Knew Ayers’ brother
Hulton was in the same class as Tim Ayers, Bill Ayers’ brother, at Glenbard High School in Glen Ellyn. Although he did not know Bill Ayers, Hulton thought he might have met him at the parents’ home once or twice, but he could not say for certain.
Hulton attended Glenbard, now known as Glenbard West, for four years, but did not have enough credits to graduate. He later earned a GED while in military service. Taking leave from the USPS when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965, Hulton returned to work as a mailman following his honorable discharge in 1967.
While in the Army, he was assigned to a Pershing Ballistics Missile unit in Germany. Although the Vietnam War was being fought at the time, he was never assigned to Vietnam.
Source: Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Corsi's latest book is "Where's the REAL Birth Certificate?"
Read the preliminary findings of Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.
Comment:
It looks like Obama really is the Manchurian President. Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
by JEROME R. CORSI
CHICAGO, Ill. – Did the parents of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers help finance Barack Obama’s Harvard education?
Did Ayers’ mother believe Obama was a foreign student?
And was the young Obama convinced at the time – long before he even entered politics – that he was going to become president of the United States?
A retired U.S. Postal Service carrier who delivered mail to Tom and Mary Ayers in a Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s and claims to have met Obama in front of the Ayers home emphatically says yes to all three questions.
Allen Hulton, who was commended for 39 years of honorable service with the USPS, has given a sworn affidavit to investigators commissioned by Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio to determine whether Obama is eligible for Arizona’s 2012 election ballot. Hulton has recorded about three hours of video interviews with WND.
Hulton says that in conversations with Mary Ayers while on his route he learned of the couple’s enthusiasm and support for a black foreign student. One bright, warm Chicagoland day, he recounts, he met the student who fit Mary Ayers’ description in front of the Ayers home in Glen Ellyn, Ill. That young man, Hulton is convinced, was Barack Obama.
Hulton delivered mail to the Ayers, who are both deceased, when he was stationed at the post office in Glen Ellyn, an upper-middle class suburb 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, from late 1986 to 1997. He was a USPS employee from March 28, 1962, through March 30, 2001.(Editor’s note: Although the Ayers family no longer lives there, WND is withholding the Glen Ellyn street address for the sake of the current residents’ privacy.)
“It was a beautiful neighborhood – one of the nicer routes any of the letter carriers would have liked to have had,” Hulton recalls. “It had some large and very beautiful homes.”
As WND reported yesterday, Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers – who he dismissed in a 2008 debate as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” – plagued him in the 2008 presidential campaign and could resurface in this year’s election, as many questions remain.
Young Obama
Over a period of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hulton estimates he spoke with Mary Ayers about 18 to 20 times and once to Tom Ayers, who died in 2007. Mary Ayers died in 2000.
“Sometimes Mary would be out when I delivered the mail, and we would exchange a few words on occasion,” he says, recalling that she liked to talk about her family.
“One day, Mary came to the door when I came up to the house with the mail,” he remembers. “After a greeting, she started enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student they were helping out, and she referred to him as a foreign student.”
Hulton assumed that by “helping” the student, Mary Ayers meant she and her husband were financially supporting the black foreign exchange student with his education.
He says that Mary Ayers told him the student’s name, but that it was a “strange name” that he could not remember, even though at the time it sounded African to him.
“I was taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about him,” Hulton says. “And I believe she said he was from either Kenya or Indonesia, and I favor Indonesia in my recollection.”
WND has reported that when Obama was in Indonesia with his Indonesian stepfather and his mother from ages 6 to10, he was registered in school as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim. He went by the name Barry Soetoro, adopting the surname of his Indonesian stepfather. His mother’s passport listed him with the surname Soebarkah.
Obama refuses to waive privacy rights that would allow the Hawaii Department of Health to release any adoption records that may exist for him.
Even should Obama waive privacy rights, the Hawaii Department of Health might not feel compelled to release any adoption records that may exist. Tight restrictions to vital records have been enacted by the Hawaii State Legislature to seal any public documents pertaining to Obama’s birth records and his adoption status.
If Obama were adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, he may have compromised his eligibility to be president, according to Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, which requires that a president be a “natural-born citizen.”
‘I’m going to be president of the United States’
About a year after discussing with Mary Ayers the foreign student she and her husband were supporting, Hulton recalls meeting a young black male on the sidewalk in front of the Ayers home.
Hulton describes the man as being in his early 20s, noting that he was tall, thin, had a light complexion and that his ears stuck out.
“He greeted me,” Hulton says. “He was very polite, dressed nicely, but informally – slacks and a dress shirt – and he spoke with no accent. Immediately this young black man entered into conversation with me. He told me he had taken the train out from Chicago and had come to thank the Ayers family personally for having helped him with his education.”
Hulton remembers asking the young man what his plans were for the future.
“He looked right at me and told me he was going to be president of the United States,” Hulton says.
“There was a little bit of a grin on his face when he said it – he sounded sure of himself, but not arrogant. I know how people will say things because they have an ambition, but it did not come across that way,” Hulton says. “It came across as if this young black male was telling me he was going to be president, almost as if it were the statement of a scientific fact that had already been determined, as if his being president had been already pre-arranged.”
Hulton says the claim made him speechless.
“I kind of stuttered a response and said that nowadays anything is possible. I wished him good luck with his ambition,” he says.
Immediately, Hulton associated the young black man with the foreign student Mary Ayers had mentioned to him so enthusiastically about a year earlier.
“I remembered the conversation I had with Mary, and I associated this young man with the foreign student she had discussed with me, because Mary said they were supporting this foreign student, and the young black man I met outside the Ayers’ home said he had come to Glen Ellyn to thank the Ayers in person for helping him with his education.”
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hulton observed several news reports detailing the relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, and he recalled the encounter with the young man in front of Tom and Mary Ayers’ home.
“The facial and physical characteristics, as well as candidate Obama’s voice, matched that of the young black male I met in front of the Ayers’ home,” Hulton says in the affidavit he signed Nov. 12, 2011, for Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.
“I am positive that the black male I spoke with in front of the Ayers’ house that day was indeed a young Barack Obama.”
Hulton distinctly recalls that the day he met Obama in front of the Ayers’ residence was a warm, sunny day and that Obama wasn’t wearing a jacket.
Marxist
Hulton recalls that he had one conversation with Tom Ayers, who was retired as CEO and chairman of Commonwealth Edison, shortly after the Ayers family moved into their home in Glen Ellyn.
“He asked me how I liked my job, and he started into what seemed to me a Marxist viewpoint on what it is like for the working man, trying to convince me that working people like me were exploited by their employers,” Hulton remembers of the conversation.
“As an American citizen, I appreciated everything I had, and I was not at war with people who had more than I had,” he says. “It surprised me to hear somebody who had been president of Consolidated Edison talking in these terms.”
Hulton says he got the feeling that Tom Ayers thought he knew more about the plight of the workingman and than he did.
Summer 1989
A likely timeframe for Hulton’s alleged encounter with Obama is the summer of 1989, when Obama was an intern at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, after his first year at Harvard Law School.
Hulton says Obama mentioned to him taking the train. The Metra, a commuter from downtown Chicago, stops at a Glen Ellyn station a little more than a mile from the Ayers’ residence.
Michelle Robinson, Obama’s wife-to-be, was the attorney at the firm assigned to mentor Obama in the summer of 1989.
Bernardine Dohrn also had worked as a paralegal at Sidley Austin, from 1984 through 1988. Dohrn’s 1960s radical activities as a self-described “revolutionary communist” landed her on the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives, and because of her felony conviction, she was not allowed to take the Illinois bar exam.
Widely speculated in Chicago is that Dohrn got the job at Sidley Austin through the influence of her father-in-law, Thomas Ayers, who was one of the law firm’s biggest clients.
Michelle Obama started at the firm in the summer of 1988 and remained there until 1991.
Hulton recalls meeting Dohrn at the home of her in-laws, although his encounters with her were limited to having Dohrn sign for mail addressed to her.
First reported in 2009
Hulton’s account of meeting Obama in suburban Chicago was first reported by California lawyer and political scientist Stephen Diamond in September 2009.
Writing on his blog, Diamond reported that he had interviewed Hulton at length and considered his account credible.
“The statement by Hulton is the first eyewitness account of a possible relationship between Obama and Tom Ayers and the first that dates his relationship with the Ayers family to the mid-1980s,” Diamond wrote.
As early as Oct. 13, 2008, prior to the November 2008 presidential election, Diamond had reported that Obama’s relationship with the Ayers family dated back to 1988. At that time, Obama, as head of the Developing Communities Project, joined the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, the ABCs Coalition. The lobbying alliance aimed to push through Chicago public schools the creation of “Local School Councils,” or LSCs, to oversee teachers and administrators.
“The proposal was very controversial, and groups like Operation PUSH headed by Jesse Jackson did not support it, because many teachers were black – it was one of the first stable middle class careers a black person, and black women in particular, could aspire to in Chicago,” Diamond wrote.
Tom Ayers and Bill Ayers were strong supporters of the LSCs, however, according to Diamond, and Chicago United, a group founded by Tom Ayers, joined ABCs too. Bill Ayers became chairman of ABCs.
Knew Ayers’ brother
Hulton was in the same class as Tim Ayers, Bill Ayers’ brother, at Glenbard High School in Glen Ellyn. Although he did not know Bill Ayers, Hulton thought he might have met him at the parents’ home once or twice, but he could not say for certain.
Hulton attended Glenbard, now known as Glenbard West, for four years, but did not have enough credits to graduate. He later earned a GED while in military service. Taking leave from the USPS when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965, Hulton returned to work as a mailman following his honorable discharge in 1967.
While in the Army, he was assigned to a Pershing Ballistics Missile unit in Germany. Although the Vietnam War was being fought at the time, he was never assigned to Vietnam.
Source: Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Corsi's latest book is "Where's the REAL Birth Certificate?"
Read the preliminary findings of Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.
Comment:
It looks like Obama really is the Manchurian President. Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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