Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 11/13/2009

Last month when the White House released its visitor log for the first six months of the Obama presidency, one name appeared far more often than any other: Service Employee International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern. Stern has every right to expect to be welcome in the Obama White House. He has repeatedly bragged about the fact that under his leadership, the SEIU spent $60.7 million to elect Barack Obama president. And what is Stern buying with his $60.7 million besides White House tours? Ever expanding federal government programs and state government bailouts which are rapidly bankrupting our country.

Recent Entries In the Green Room: Utah’s Gov. Herbert on DC ‘Freezing Out the States’ Over Health Reform Is there a Constitutional Basis for Mandatory Health Insurance? Big Labor and Big Government Are Officially the Same Thing Outside the Beltway: California’s Nightmare the Future for Other States? Asino: The EU’s €7 million Blogging Donkey

Unlike his predecessor, John Sweeney, who came up the ranks after starting with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Stern entered the labor movement when the SEIU organized his shop when he was working as a welfare case worker for the State of Pennsylvania. Stern’s public sector entrance into labor is by no means an anomaly. In fact, for the first time ever in American history, preliminary estimates of union membership for 2009 show that most union members now work for either the local, state, or federal government.

Heritage scholar James Sherk has the numbers: “The overall unionization rate between January and September 2009 stood at 12.4%, unchanged from last year. However, this difference masks a large difference between unions in the private and public sectors. Union membership has fallen to 7.3% of private sector workers – the lowest rate since Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. But it is a completely different story in the public sector: 37.6% of government employees belong to unions, up almost a percentage point since last year. Those 7.9 million unionized government employees are 51% of all union members nationwide.”

The days when “union member” meant an American working in a steel plant, or coal mine, or auto factory are gone. Today, unions are dependent on government, not the private sector, for their livelihood. Therefore, unions like the SEIU have little interest in private sector job growth. Private sector jobs don’t help fund $60.7 million political campaigns. But government jobs do. The change in incentives has been devastating to American taxpayers. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Steven Malanga explains why:

In the private sector … employers who are too generous with pay and benefits will be punished. In the public sector, however, more union members means more voters. And more voters means more dollars for political campaigns to elect sympathetic politicians who will enact higher taxes to foot the bill for the upward arc of government spending on workers.

Heritage’s Sherk details just some of the ways we have already witnessed this:

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 11/12/2009

Last month, The Washington Post reported that President Barack Obama had asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan “to help determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help.” He supposedly wanted “the clearest possible understanding of what the challenges are to our forces and what is required to meet the challenge.”

Recent Entries Every Day is a Bonus: Honoring Our Veterans Iran’s Latest American Hostages If Cap and Trade Doesn’t Work, Obama will Make it Work Video: The Real Fiscal Cost of Government Run Health Care Democracy after the Iron Curtain: A Work in Progress

But now two weeks later the Associated Press reports that President Obama has rejected all of the options presented by his national security team and is now asking for “revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government.” The White House continues to assert that Obama just needs more time to properly calibrate how to communicate to the Afghan government that it “must improve in a reasonable period of time.” But Obama has been President for ten months now, and his rhetoric during the campaign would tend to suggest that he has been aware for sometime of our struggles in Afghanistan. The truth is the Pentagon has been scrutinizing the failures of our AfPak strategy for over two years and the new administration has benefited from all the work done before it took the White House. The argument that we need more study, or that half measures will do, is wearing pretty thin. All this news makes it look like the president is shopping for a rationale to justify a commitment that is “politically” acceptable in Washington.

In fact, the ongoing public debate about Afghanistan has already cost the U.S. credibility with its NATO allies and is confusing our regional partners who are starting to hedge their bets and plan for a decreased U.S. commitment to the region. As well-known Pakistan expert Ahmed Rashid commented on October 27th in an article in the National Interest, “Every sign of the United States or NATO dithering over strategy only convinces the Pakistani military about keeping its Taliban option open.”

Yes, the recent flawed Afghan election was a setback to international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, but as Heritage senior research fellow Lisa Curtis notes: “Part of the reason Karzai’s reputation has suffered is the deteriorating security situation — so it stands to reason that providing additional U.S. troops to reverse Taliban momentum, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal has requested, would also increase the credibility of the Afghan regime. While the Obama administration is right to demand cleaner rule from Karzai, it also must be realistic about the security situation and acknowledge that stemming Taliban advances is vital to U.S. national security interests.”

The Obama administration used to believe that defeating the Taliban was a vital national security interest. It was just this past August when President Obama said: “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

We need a decision from President Obama, and pretty compelling rationale to support it, soon. Obama’s Afghan strategy should provide U.S. military commanders on the ground with the resources they need to fight a successful counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban. Depriving our commanders of the resources they require is a recipe for failure.

QUICK HITS

Michelle Malkin: P.C. in the U.S.A.: A deadly, bipartisan infection

The violence at Fort Hood, President Obama told mourners on Tuesday, was “incomprehensible.” The “twisted logic that led to the tragedy,” he reiterated, may be “too hard to comprehend.” If the Bush administration suffered a systemic failure of imagination on homeland security, the Obama administration is suffering an willful failure of comprehension.

What exactly is so hard to comprehend? Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan made his means, motives, and inspiration all too clear for those willing to see and hear. In his 2007 slide presentation to fellow Army doctors on “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the Military,” Hasan spelled it out: “We love death more then (sic) you love life!” more…..

…………….

Bloomberg: Emerson’s Farr Says U.S. Is Destroying Manufacturing

Emerson Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer David Farr said the U.S. government is hurting manufacturers with regulation and taxes and his company will continue to focus on growth overseas.

“Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.”

Emerson, the maker of electrical equipment and InSinkErator garbage disposals with $20.9 billion in sales for the year ended September, will keep expanding in emerging markets, which represented 32 percent of revenue in 2009. About 36 percent of manufacturing is now in “best-cost countries” up from 21 percent in 2003, according to slides accompanying his speech.

Companies will create jobs in India and China, “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something,” Farr said. more…..

…………….

Mary Katharine Ham: Who I Met at the Tea Party: A Veterans Day Tribute

When I attended Michele Bachmann’s impromptu rally against Pelosi’s health-care bill last week, I met a lot of just-plain-good folks. Media accounts ignored them in favor of a sprinkling of offensive signs, although the Huffington Post wasn’t able to muster even 12 offensive signs from the rally of more than 10K. At times, coverage suggested the animating emotion of every attendee was “hatred.” Irresponsible commentators multiplied offensive signs to fit their narrative—in Paul Krugman’s hands, one documented Holocaust sign at the rally became “large signs showing piles of bodies.”

If one cared to be fair to the attendees, however, it was easy to find a stream of kind, determined, involved, ordinary Americans. And, occasionally, a truly extraordinary one.  more…..

…………….

Washington Examiner: Climate bill’s ‘emergency provision’ gives Obama strong-man powers

Both the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy approved earlier this year and the version just okayed by Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Democrats (Republicans boycotted the vote) contains an obscure but nasty bureaucratic provision that requires President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez.

Here’s how: The bills require a federal declaration of a “climate emergency” if world greenhouse gas levels reach 450 parts per million. Guess what? The Pacific Northwest National Lab says it is a virtual certainty that level will be reached within a few months. The bill then requires the president to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions…to address shortfalls” in achieving needed greenhouse gas reductions. more…..

…………….

Now that Newt Gingrich has once again partnered up with con-man race hustler Al Sharpton, this time for a ‘three-city “listening and learning” tour’ for education reform, Conservative Nation thought now might be a good time for a refresher course on what an absolute piece of human trash Al Sharpton really is.

This ‘partnership’, coming on the heels as it does of Gingrich’s disastrous endorsement of Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 race, suggest that perhaps the best days of Newt’s political instincts are behind him.

Capitalism Magazine: Al Sharpton: The Democrat’s David Duke

…it is impossible to imagine, say, David Duke running for president as a Republican and not being shunned by every leading figure in the party. Impossible to imagine his campaign appearances being covered in news accounts that made no mention of his history in the Ku Klux Klan and his links to neo-Nazis. Impossible to imagine that he would be treated as just another candidate, albeit one with a “controversial” past. No one would roll over for Duke. Why are they rolling over for Sharpton?

After all, Sharpton’s résumé is at least as vile as Duke’s. more…..

Discover the networks: Al Sharpton:

• Racial agitator and Founder of the National Action Network
• Helped incite anti-Jewish riots in Crown Heights, New York in 1991 in which a Jewish student was murdered
• Convicted of libel for his role in the Tawana Brawley hoax
• Incited anti-Semites against Freddy’s Mart which was burned by one of Sharpton’s followers, killing seven people
• Democratic Party presidential candidate, 2004

more…..

…..

-Cnation

A friend of mine is in the market for a new motorcycle. His credit score is in the high 600′s. Should be a shoo-in for decent financing terms on a relatively small loan, right?

Think again.

Via email (posted w/permission):

I suppose never being late on a payment to anyone and paying all loans off ahead of time makes me a shitty credit risk.  At least, that’s what American General Finance (subsidiary of AIG) thinks.  I want every dime of mine that went to them via [TARP] back.  And now.  They did say they’d give me a loan for 24 months at 24% if I put 20% down.  Makes perfect sense when the prime rate is, what, negative 2% or something???

Now, maybe I’m mistaken – God only knows it happens from time to time – but weren’t these TARP funds that were handed out to favored financial institutions like candy supposed to free up credit?

…..

-Cnation

Today, we at The Heritage Foundation will honor Veterans Day by pausing to remember those who sacrifice in defense of freedom for our country. Heritage honors all who serve past and present in the United States Armed Forces, their families, and all military retirees and veterans. We solemnly remember those fallen men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion and will also not forget those who have yet to come home and remain missing in action.

Recent Entries We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering America’s Founding Video: The Cap and Trade YouTube the Obama Admin. Does Not Want You To See Are We Becoming Europe-lite? Next Week’s House Health Care Shell Game Adult Time for Adult Crime: Ethan Allen Windom

This national holiday warrants a diversion from discussing domestic priorities to take a closer look at what Congress and the White House are doing about many pressing defense issues.

Some policymakers seem want to keep defense and military issues out of the headlines, choosing instead to continue cutting the defense budget to fund domestic programs. This observation is based on actual outcomes from this year’s defense budget debate.

During the past few months, Congress and the President effectively shut down the purchase of next-generation equipment for the military. That includes: the Air Force’s F-22 fifth-generation fighter aircraft, the most sophisticated in the world; the Army’s ground vehicles designed to replace a combat fleet built in the 1970s and 80s; two types of helicopters-one which fulfills the unique duty of rescuing military personnel held behind enemy lines; and large cuts to the missile defense program designed to thwart the threat of long-range ballistic missiles from hitting U.S. shores and cities.

What’s likely next year? Jack Reed (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently opined that the Department of Defense should buckle up for some (more) “painful adjustments”-as if any more could be borne by those in uniform-and get ready to do the following:

• sacrifice defense dollars to pay for TARP, the stimulus bill, domestic programs and the federal debt;
• hand over another chunk of the defense budget to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for civilian aid or “soft power” programs; and
• delay or cut weapons programs that are not “absolutely essential.”

Unfortunately, Congress set a horrible precedent, having given the President so many of his defense cuts during a time of war. That just makes more devastating cancellations likely in the coming years.

The problem is that, since they have no new weapons systems to slash, politicians will need to start eliminating equipment that today’s troops are using everyday. This includes replacements for tanks, trucks, ships and planes that are already worn out after nine years of consecutive warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In short, finding further “savings” in the defense budget would require cutting to the bone and hurting those in uniform. Having a world-class military and truly honoring those who serve requires policymakers to provide the same technologically-advanced equipment to defeat any enemy when necessary and protect those in harm’s way.

Providing the military just enough to barely get by is dangerous, and an outright dereliction of duty by federal policymakers whose first job is found in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution: to provide for the common defense of the American people.

QUICK HITS

“Non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats”

-Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan

…..

Did Political Correctness Kill 14 in Fort Hood?

From the New Hampshire Union Leader:

PC’d to death: The Army must give answers

Did 13 American soldiers die at Fort Hood because officers were afraid of appearing insensitive to Muslims?

In 2001, the alleged shooter, Nidal Hasan, apparently attended a Virginia mosque led by a radical cleric — the same mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers. He openly opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because the United States was fighting Muslims. A doctor who studied with Hasan recalled him justifying suicide bombings and accusing the United States of waging war against Islam.
Editorial logo
Click for Editorials & Op-Eds

“His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan’s ‘anti-American propaganda,’ but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint,” The Associated Press reported over the weekend.

U.S. intelligence officials knew that Hasan had tried to contact al-Qaida, ABC News reported on Monday.

Patriotic Muslims have given and continue to give valuable service to this country. That is not the question the Fort Hood shooting raises. The question is whether kowtowing to political correctness prevented the Army from expelling a known enemy within its ranks. At the moment, that appears to be the case.

…………….

WSJ: Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer

To those not terrorized by fear of offending Muslim sensitivities, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s motive was instantly clear: It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments. All were conspicuous signs of danger his Army superiors chose to ignore.

What is hard to ignore, now, is the growing derangement on all matters involving terrorism and Muslim sensitivities. Its chief symptoms: a palpitating fear of discomfiting facts and a willingness to discard those facts and embrace the richest possible variety of ludicrous theories as to the motives behind an act of Islamic terrorism. All this we have seen before but never in such naked form. The days following the Fort Hood rampage have told us more than we want to know, perhaps, about the depth and reach of this epidemic. more…..

…………….

American Thinker: Ignoring Infiltration

…why confuse ourselves with facts? The narrative has been set: the problem involves not killers shooting innocents for pathological reasons, but nonexistent mobs running the streets of America, waving ropes and looking for anyone wearing a dishdash. It’s not Islamists who are responsible, but us: America and the people who inhabit it. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it can be cut down, trimmed, reshaped, and refurbished to fit anything. Here, it has been reworked to serve as the cover for the murder of thirteen servicemen and the maiming of thirty-odd others. And we’re supposed to sit back and nod and say, “Obama knows best. If anything’s wrong, Obama will tell us.”

It will turn out to be the army’s fault. They simply didn’t “adapt” themselves to Hasan’s needs. more…..

…………….

Ralph Peters: Deadly Denial

We’ve already learned that Islamist terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan attended the Northern Virginia mosque of Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, a fiery al Qaeda supporter who later fled the United States. We know that Hasan’s peers, subordinates and patients repeatedly raised red flags that his superiors suppressed. We know he was a player on Islamist-extremist Web sites. The FBI’s uncovering one extremist link after another.But to call this an act of terrorism, the White House would need an autographed photo of Osama bin Laden helping Hasan buy weapons in downtown Killeen, Texas. Even that might not suffice. more…..

…………….

Forbes: Going Muslim

America differentiates itself on integration from Western European countries, which are far more cringing and guilt-driven in their approach. But can the American swagger persist if many Americans come genuinely to view Muslims as Fifth Columnists? The integration compact depends on a broad trust that the immigrant’s desire to be American can happily co-exist with his other forms of racial/cultural/religious identity. Once that trust doesn’t exist, America faces a problem in need of urgent resolution.

Have we reached that point of breakdown in trust? Not yet, I think, and not by some distance; but a few more murderous incidents of the Maj. Hasan variety–a few more shouts of “Allahu Akbar” as Americans are shot dead–will push many Americans on to a dangerous cusp. more…..

…………….

Verum Serum: Connecting the Dots on Hasan’s Imam: Anwar al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki is the imam who, as we reported here first on Sunday, praised Nidal Hasan as a hero for killing 13 unarmed people at Fort Hood. Believed to be residing in Yemen possibly working as a recruiter for al qaeda, al-Awlaki is also known as the imam from the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, VA. The mosque is best known as the place where two of the 9-11 hijackers attended prior to carrying out the worst terror attack in American history. Authorities are now looking into the likelihood that Nidal Hasan also attended the mosque around this time. It’s known for certain that his mother’s funeral was held there.

There is more to the story of al-Awlaki and his connection to 9-11. It begins here in Southern California. more…..

…………….

J.R. Salzman: PTSD

I’m more than a little angry right now.  Yes, I’m irate that some sh-tbag Major (“sh-tbag” is often used as a technical term in the Army) opened fire on a group of his fellow Soldiers killing 12 and wounding 30. But that’s not even what is under my skin right now. What is bothering me is the general reaction of our media and those stupid enough to think this was not an act of terrorism, but was caused by supposed PTSD caused at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

You want to know what PTSD is like? I’ll tell you. more…..

…………….

Judicial Watch: Homeland Sec. Chief Fears Muslim Backlash

Days after an al Qaeda wannabe Army major went on a murderous rampage at the nation’s largest military base, the Secretary of Homeland Security’s biggest concern appears to be preventing a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.

Janet Napolitano, the Obama official in charge of protecting the country’s safety, is most worried about a politically incorrect backlash against Muslims after the Ft. Hood massacre and says her agency is working hard with groups across the U.S. to deflect any retaliation against Muslims for one man’s fury. more…..

Here’s a thought – perhaps if Janet Napolitano was, you know, doing her damn job, which incidentally includes things like protecting Americans from filthy Jihadist animals like Hasan – and not the other way around – maybe we wouldn’t be mourning the loss of these 13 soldiers and one unborn child today.

…..

-Cnation

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and said: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Recent Entries Berlin Wall Anniversary: Remembering the Victims of Communism Repealing the Death Tax Would Create 1.5 Million Jobs Governor Jeb Bush Equips Georgia Lawmakers with Lessons for School Reform Is Secretary Duncan Using Stimulus Cash As A Slush Fund? Obama’s Failed Stimulus in Pictures: 10.2% Unemployment

On November 9, 1989, just two years after Reagan made his Brandenburg Gate speech, the people of Germany did tear down “this wall” and in so doing they freed hundreds of millions of people from the tyranny of communism. Reagan by no means single-handily brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall, but his leadership against despotism was widely recognized by the victims of communism. When he visited Poland in 1990, a dissident leader presented Reagan with a sword explaining: “I am giving you this saber for helping us to chop off the head of communism.”

But the leftists in America do not want us to remember Reagan’s role in history. That is why President Barack Obama (the same man who found time to jet to Copenhagen at the drop of a rumor that his presence could win the Olympics for his hometown of Chicago) could not be bothered to attend the 20th anniversary of the wall’s fall last night. Instead, President Obama taped a video message that completely failed to mention Reagan or British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

More than petty partisan slights are at stake here. President Obama’s refusal to recognize the role President Reagan’s and Prime Minister Thatcher’s leadership played in defeating despotism goes to the core of Obama’s foreign policy priorities. Heritage scholar Nile Gardiner explains:

Barack Obama simply does not view the world as Reagan did, in terms of good versus evil, as a world divided between the forces of freedom on one side and totalitarianism on the other. For the Obama administration the advancement of human rights and individual liberty on the world stage is a distinctly low priority, as we have seen with its engagement strategy towards the likes of Iran, Burma, Sudan, Venezuela and Russia.

We commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the collapse of communism, to honor those who died resisting communism, and to resolve that never again will peoples and nations allow so evil a tyranny to terrorize the world.

Yet, at a time when the United States currently faces challenges as complicated as those confronted by Reagan (war in Afghanistan, the global fight against Islamist terrorism, the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran) Obama is bent on apologizing for our nation’s actions, betraying Cold War allies, and dithering on troop deployments.

QUICK HITS

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 11/9/2009

Following last Tuesday’s election, the last thing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wanted to do was allow Members of Congress to go home and talk to their constituents about the $2.6 trillion health care bill she was marshaling through Congress. The centerpiece of Pelosi’s trap and pressure campaign was a Saturday address by President Barack Obama in the Cannon Office Building, where Obama warned Democrats: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”

Recent Entries How the Pelosi Plan Kills Jobs What Superman and Barack Obama Don’t Have in Common Obamacare’s Biggest Victims: The Young Capping Carbon Will Threaten National Security More Than Bolster It State Department to Mr. Zelaya: A Deal is a Deal!

The extremists. That is how the President of the Unites States describes Americans who do not want to see the federal government control over half of all health care spending. And just who are some of these extremists? Looking over just today’s papers we find: