NRO: Slipshod Social Democracy

Harry Reid can rightly claim to be making history. If he passes health-care reform, he’ll depend on a series of historic “firsts.” It’d be the first time Congress had passed a major new entitlement program without bipartisan support; it’d be the first time it passed such a program without popular support; and the first time it passed such a program without knowing or particularly caring what’s in it. more…..

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Rep. Lamar Smith: Recovering stolen jobs is key to American recovery

How can the administration justify giving millions of jobs to illegal immigrants when the economy is struggling with a 10 percent unemployment rate? Adding insult to injury, it absurdly claims that immigration enforcement is done. That is simply not true. And nowhere is that more clear than in the administration’s record on work site enforcement.

Statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, reveal significant drops in work site enforcement activity across the board. Administrative arrests (arrests of illegal immigrants who will be placed into deportation proceedings) have fallen 68 percent, criminal arrests are down 60 percent, criminal indictments have fallen 58 percent and criminal convictions are down 63 percent — all in just one year! more…..

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USA Today: For feds, more get 6-figure salaries

The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules.

“There’s no way to justify this to the American people. It’s ridiculous,” says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House’s federal workforce subcommittee. more…..

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American Thinker: The Pathology Of The Roch Socialist

People such as George Soros and Michael Moore certainly talk a good game, but the next Mother Teresa they are not. Mother Teresa never criticized the free-market system; wealth just wasn’t for her. Soros and Moore are quite the opposite. They will never take a vow of poverty and dedicate themselves to helping the poor. They just want our civilization to take a vow of poverty and become poor. This has caused many to wonder: How can someone preach socialism while being the most rapacious “capitalist” imaginable? Well, I have a theory about this. more….

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Politico: Tough road for immigration bill

Immigration reform advocates are launching a concerted drive this week to make sure their issue doesn’t get the election-year sidestep from Congress and a White House already wrestling with complex and far-reaching legislation on health care, climate change and regulating Wall Street.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and more than 20 other Democratic House members are scheduled to introduce legislation Tuesday that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to legalize their status in the United States. more…..

Sure, over 10% unemployment, an economy in shambles, borders wide open and illegal immigrant crime nearing epidemic proportions….seems like the perfect time to revisit amnesty legislation, wouldn’t you say? These house democrats – advocates for national suicide, every last one of them.

If they think they’ve gotten a fight over healthcare, just wait until they try giving amnesty legislation serious consideration.

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Human Events: Gratitude, Not a Court Martial for the SEAL Three

On March 31, 2004, four men working as security guards — Scott Helvenston, Wesley Batalona, Jerry Zovko and Michael Teague — were ambushed by insurgents in Fallujah. They were killed, their bodies burned and mutilated, and two were strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates. The insurgents made their own video of the attack, broadcasting the images around the world.

That is the atrocity Ahmed Hashim Abed is accused of plotting and executing. Yet, charges are pending against the three Navy SEALs who captured this terrorist, a man whose goal in life is the death of America and American citizens.

It is well-known that one of al Queda’s key training techniques for operatives includes the directive that if captured they should allege abuse at every opportunity. Charging these American heroes based on the flimsy claims of a top terrorist gives al Queda a strategic advantage and sends the wrong message to the next group of Americans sent out into the shadows to capture one of the bad guys.  Media reports have stated Abed had a fat lip. more…..

Such is the state of our military in Obama’s Amerika. Disgraceful.  They should have just killed the guy.

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The Patriot Room: Lefties to Reid: Kill the Bill; Is it over?

It looks like Senate Democrats are down to Plan D. The liberals caved on Plan A, single-payer. Then Plan B, the public option, went by the boards. Plan C, the Medicare buy-in, went up in smoke last night. Now it’s on to Plan D, and nobody actually seems to know what that is yet. President Obama, in a sign of desperation, has summoned the Dems to the White House this afternoon for a knee-capping pep rally to get the team over the finish line, but it looks like other than cajoling, there is no real plan to reel in the wobbly members. more…..

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FOX: Inconvenient Truth for Gore as Arctic Ice Claims Don’t Add Up

In his speech, Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Gore was relying upon dropped the former vice president in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr. Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.” more…..

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-Cnation

From the Baltimore Sun:

A federal judge suggested Monday that he might restrict the scope of a first-of-its kind lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore against mortgage giant Wells Fargo Bank N.A.

The city accuses Wells Fargo of engaging in illegal “reverse redlining” — targeting black neighborhoods for bad loans that resulted in mass foreclosures. The resulting drain on city services cost tens of millions of dollars, the lawsuit alleges.

Lawyers for Wells Fargo filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in September, arguing that the city lacked standing to file the complaint. Baltimore was the first municipality to sue a lender in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. Similar lawsuits were later filed in Cleveland and Birmingham, Ala., but those complaints have been dismissed by federal judges.

Ok, it’s like this: ACORN, other racial grievance groups, and assorted race hustlers pressure banks both directly and through the federal government to provide mortgages to people who absolutely, no-freakin’-way-in-hell would ever have qualified for them on their own and who clearly would have no way of paying them back. This is a fact. Then, in what must have been a shock to everyone, said loan recipients default on their mortgages and the homes go into foreclosure. Then, the city of Baltimore sues the mortgage lender for racially motivated criminal activity.

So, the banks are racist for not providing loans to people who aren’t credit-worthy, then they’re racist for providing loans to people who aren’t credit-worthy.

Does the ‘black community’ really not understand why people are hesitant to do business in/with it? Really?

A rational man might conclude that the only winning move would be not to play, and he would be right.

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More from Michelle Malkin

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-Cnation

From YouTube:

Journalist and filmmaker Phelim McAleer (Mine Your Own Business, Not Evil Just Wrong) attempts to ask Al Gore a question about ‘Climategate’ emails at the UN Climate Change Conference. Al Gore’s Press Secretary grabs his McAleer’s microphone and UN security guard pulls the cable from the microphone. For more Inconvenient Questions and answers about The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria visit www.noteviljustwrong.com

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-Cnation

The climate treaty negotiations inside Copenhagen’s Bella Center at the United Nations Climate Change Conference ground to a halt yesterday when the G-77, the largest group of developing nations, walked out. These poorer nations demanded that richer nations sign a treaty that includes a large transfer of wealth to the developing world to compensate for the developed world’s historical contribution to global warming. The G-77 countries ended their walkout after less than two hours, perhaps because global warming has had no apparent impact on December Copenhagen temperatures.

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Stuck out in the cold trying to get into the convention center that the developing countries had left were thousands of registered participants including delegations from universities, trade unions, and the press. It took more than 8 hours for non-governmental delegates, like Heritage’s Steven Groves and Ben Lieberman, to check in on December 14th. The New York Times described the registration system as chaotic, and notes that the overflow of freezing unregistered delegates forced the Copenhagen police to shut down the subway stop nearest the conference. The problem: despite some two years of planning, the United Nations organizers failed to come up with a way to fit the 45,000 people they registered for the conference into the 15,000 person capacity Bella Center. Oops.

This entire circus would be funnier if not for what is at stake: trillions of dollars in regulatory actions and billions of dollars in aid to developing nations. And, if there were to be some miracle and nations in attendance did sign an agreement, who would be in charge of monitoring all these agreed-to carbon reductions and oversight of all that development aid? The same entity that can’t even figure out that 45,000 people won’t into a 15,000 person building; the United Nations. Heritage fellow Ben Lieberman explains:

Compliance with such a treaty would require massive changes to the U.S. economy, and U.N. bodies would decide many of the details of those changes. For example, one way to comply with Kyoto or subsequent treaties is to purchase so-called offsets to carbon dioxide emissions. Offsets allow regulated entities to pay others to undertake projects that presumably reduce emissions globally, such as paying landowners to plant trees or bankrolling the installation of solar panels in poor countries. In many cases, companies find offsets cheaper than actually reducing their own emissions. However, these projects have been subject to fraud. For example, some offset projects have not actually reduced emissions, while others involved industrial facilities with unnecessarily high initial emissions for the purpose of profiting by lowering them later. Currently, the Clean Development Mechanism under the U.N. decides which offset projects are acceptable. Thus, unelected international bureaucracies would control this critical aspect of a climate treaty, which would have significant implications for the U.S. economy.

The costs of all this regulatory compliance would be huge. A Heritage Foundation analysis of the Waxman-Markey energy legislation found that for a household of four, energy costs (electric, natural gas, gasoline expenses) would rise by $436 in 2012 and by $1,241 by 2035, averaging $829 over that period. Higher energy costs would increase the cost of many other products and services. Overall, Waxman-Markey would reduce gross domestic product by $393 billion annually and by a total of $9.4 trillion by 2035.

A new poll by Gallup/USA Today finds that when given no specifics, Americans generally support a climate treaty 55%-38%. But once you start informing Americans about the trade offs involved with such a deal, support plummets. 46% of Americans say they worry more that the United States will take actions against global warming that cripple the U.S. economy. Furthermore, by a 7 to 1 margin Americans say the Obama administration should put a higher priority on improving the economy than reducing on global warming.

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According to Michelle Malkin:

Update: A Hill source says to pay attention to Sen. Ben Nelson. He is reportedly being threatened with closure of an air force base if he doesn’t fall in line and will be offered a “blank check” bribe bigger than Sen. Landrieu’s.

Landrieu, as you may recall, accepted a $100 MILLION bribe – which she later said was really $300 million – in exchange for her Aye vote allowing the healthcare bill debate to proceed in the Senate.

No confirmation yet on the base closure threat, but if it’s true, it’s just furter proof that these Reid-led democrat crooks will stop at nothing – not even the weakening of our military and the destruction of a local economy – to get this healthcare bill passed.

If the threat alone doesn’t get Nelson, then we the taxpayers will fund the payoff that will buy Nelson’s vote – the very vote that will destroy not only our healthcare system, but our economy, our children’s future, and our very way of life.

Oh, and if you still think this bill is about healthcare, than you’re a bigger fool than you were when you voted these creeps into office in the first place.

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-Cnation

Hot Air: Breaking: Lieberman wins, Senate drops Medicare buy-in

Major Garrett’s in the hall outside the Democratic caucus room and tweeting the word from Tom Harkin. Can’t really call this good news, as it makes passage much more likely, so let’s call it slightly-better-than-worst-case-scenario news. No more public option: more…..

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Byron York: Did AmeriCorps official lie about possible First Lady link to IG firing?

Congressional investigators looking into the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin have discovered that the head of AmeriCorps met with a top aide to First Lady Michelle Obama the day before Walpin was removed.

According to Republican investigators, Alan Solomont, then the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, had denied meeting with Jackie Norris, at the time the First Lady’s chief of staff.  But recently-released White House visitor logs show that Solomont met with Norris on June 9 of this year (as well as on two earlier occasions). President Obama fired Walpin on June 10 after an intense dispute over Walpin’s aggressive investigation of misuse of AmeriCorps money by Obama political ally Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California. more…..

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Human Events: Obama’s Assault on Economic Freedom

Yesterday, President Obama’s two principal economic advisors — National Economic Council Director Larry Summers and Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Roemer — gave us a glimpse into the continued tumult in the White House’s over how to restart America’s economic engines.

Summers said, “Today, everybody agrees that the recession is over, and the question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be.”

Roemer — asked if the recession is over — said, “”Of course not. For the people on Main Street and throughout this country, they are still suffering, the unemployment rate is still 10 percent.” She also said that the recession won’t be over until unemployment reaches “normal levels,” about 5%.  more…..

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FOX: Congressmen Call on Justice Department to Appeal ACORN Ruling

Two congressmen called on the Justice Department Monday to appeal a recent decision in federal district court that found the government’s move to cut off funding to ACORN was unconstitutional.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., described the Dec. 11 decision by Judge Nina Gershon as “preposterous.”

“The district court’s decision is troubling in many respects, but most significantly, if allowed to stand, it would effectively excise from the Constitution Congress’ express Spending Clause power to refuse to appropriate federal funds to an organization that has shown itself likely to misuse those funds in the future,” the letter reads. “Such a conclusion is nothing short of preposterous.” more…..

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Washington Examiner: Government salaries soar in bad times

Something President Obama said during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo about making foreign policy is equally applicable at home, namely, that the world must be dealt with as it is, not as we might wish it to be. This was highlighted by a USA Today investigative report published last week that found “federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.” In other words, bad times for the rest of us are good times for the federal establishment. more…..

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Big Government: False Populism, Real Profits for Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

The third step in Robert Creamer’s ten-step plan for imposing universal health care on America, according to his prison memoir, is to attack the private insurance industry: “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”

Accordingly, Creamer’s spouse, Rep. Jan Schakowsky—whose campaigns Creamer has assisted through his Strategic Consulting Group—declared at a rally for health care reform in April 2009 that she would “put the private insurance industry out of business.” more…..

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NRO: Harry Reid: Racial Bomb Thrower

It is outrageous to equate those who seek the defeat of Reid’s 2,074-page, $2.5 trillion legislative monstrosity with people who applauded while blacks were chained, robbed of their back-breaking labor, and traded hither and yon like cattle. The fact that Reid uses such insulting, insensitive language shows that he has run out of credible arguments to defend his own proposal.

… Reid presumably intended to hammer Republicans for blockading the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Did he flunk American history? more…..

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American Thinker: We Are In Big Trouble

Our country is in big trouble…huge trouble. It is time for Americans to take a hard look at our values, our conception of justice, and our standards for truth. This piece is intended as a first step in that direction. more…..

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Baldilocks: Why Black Americans Think That the Federal Government is Our Friend

While hanging out yesterday at Ace’s yesterday as he was flogging racists, I happened to mention that many if not most black Americans view the federal government as beneficial and friendly.  Some other commenters were surprised and I was surprised at their surprise, because it isn’t difficult to figure out why this is.  Whether it’s the Emancipation or the desegregation of the Armed Forces or Brown v. Board or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the federal government for the most part had seemed to be on the side of the black American as his constitutional rights were being oppressed by state or local governments.

What needs to be spelled, however is what the federal government did in the above-mentioned areas: it legally removed obstacles to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Americans who are black.  And that is what it was supposed to do. more…..

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-Cnation

Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell for 12/14/2009

Last month, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rammed through her version of Obamacare almost a week before the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS), could issue its non-partisan and independent analysis of the legislation. And for supporters of the President’s plan, it’s a good thing she did. The CMMS report eviscerated almost every single promise the President has made about his health care plan.

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According to that report, Obamacare: 1) raises health care costs; 2) causes millions of Americans to lose their current health care coverage; 3) forces millions of Americans to pay fines and still receive no health insurance; 4) causes millions of seniors to lose their Medicare Advantage plans; 4) places millions of Americans on welfare; 5) jeopardizes Medicare access for all seniors; 6) worsens health care access for the poor.

This past Friday, CMMS issued another report, this time on Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) version of Obamacare and the verdict was in many ways worse: 1) health care costs would rise by $234 billion; 2) 17 million Americans would be forced out of their existing health insurance; 3) 19 million Americans would pay $29 billion in taxes/fines and receive no health care in return; 4) 33% of all Medicare Advantage customers would lose their health care plan; 5) 18 million Americans would be put on welfare; 6) the $493 billion in Medicare cuts would force 20% of Medicare providers to become unprofitable thus jeopardizing access to care for all seniors; and 7) the explosion in Medicaid recipients would exacerbate existing health care access problems for the poor.

The week before the Senate began debating Obamacare, CNN conducted a poll and found that Americans narrowly opposed the plan, 49% to 46%. Now that the Senate has been debating the plan for two weeks, and CMMS has issued two devastating reports on what the impacts of Obamacare would be, opposition to the plan has skyrocketed. This Friday’s latest CNN poll showed 61% of Americans now oppose Obamacare compared to just 36% who support it.

Liberals are is beginning to see the writing on the wall. They know that if Obamacare fails to pass the Senate this year, the battle will be on to explain its failure. For them, the story can not be that President Barack Obama tried to push too ambitious a government health plan. It must be that the President and Congress did not go far enough to the left to satisfy the supposedly government-hungry American people. Hence the left is now attacking the White House and Reid over the public option, the employer mandate, drug reimportation, abortion, and health insurance spending caps.

Obamacare is not dead yet. Speaker Pelosi has signaled that she will quickly pass anything that comes out of the Senate, so Reid could still cave on almost everything and get a terrible bill from everybody’s prospective on the President’s desk by New Years. But Senators thinking about moving quickly should remember that the public strongly opposes this bill, and that opposition is only rising.

QUICK HITS

Once again, the party of SPEND is doing everything within their power to ensure America gets into a financial hole that it has no chance of ever, ever getting out of.

On Sunday, the Senate will vote on passage of a $1.1 TRILLION spending bill that will “give Cabinet departments such as Education, Health and Human Services and State increases far exceeding inflation”.

Because that what a congress that’s even remotely interested in fiscal responsibility in times of economic crisis and high unemployment does.

From FOX:

The measure provides spending increases averaging about 10 percent to programs under immediate control of Congress, blending increases for veterans’ programs, NASA and the FBI with a pay raise for federal workers and help for car dealers.

After a 60-36 test vote on Friday in which Democrats and a handful of Republicans helped the measure clear another Republican obstacle, the bill was expected to win the 60 Senate votes Saturday necessary to guarantee passage. A final vote is expected Sunday.

Read the whole thing here.

Does anyone doubt that the names of that ‘handful of Republicans’ will include the RINO twins, Snowe and Collins?

Repeat after me: ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.

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-Cnation

Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell for 12/11/2009

Next week Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expected to attach a provision to the Department of Defense appropriations bill that would increase our national debt limit by $1.925 trillion. This debt limit raise would authorize the U.S. Treasury to borrow as much as $14 trillion, which is 30% higher than the $10.8 trillion limit that was in place when President Barack Obama took office.

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Defending the unprecedented size of the debt limit, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told The Examiner: “There is no doubt the debt ceiling will have to be at that level in order to meet our financial obligations at this time next year. This is not creating new debt.” Not creating new debt? Hoyer speaks as though he and his Speaker are completely powerless to control all the federal spending that is driving up “our financial obligations.” In fact, Hoyer’s statement comes on the same day that he and Speaker Pelosi forced through a $447 billion “minibus” spending bill that every single Republican and 28 Democrats voted against.

Filled with 5,224 earmarks, this merged appropriations bill provides an 8% hike in discretionary spending for the third consecutive year since Pelosi took over Congress in 2007. Altogether, discretionary spending has jumped 25% since Speaker Pelosi took the gavel, and Congressional Democrats have spent $561 billion more in discretionary spending than if they had limited federal spending growth to the baseline inflation rate. Despite a $1.4 trillion deficit, appropriations bills passed this year have included:

• A 67% increase for the Environmental Protection Agency’s State and Tribal Assistance Grants;
• A 30% increase for the Corporation for National and Community Service;
• A 9% increase for Amtrak;
• An 8.4% increase for Lawmakers’ Office Allowances; and
• An 8.1% increase for the National Endowment for the Arts.

This is not the budgeting of a Congress even minimally serious about the budget deficit. And each large annual discretionary spending increase becomes part of the permanent discretionary spending baseline. In fact, the steep increases over the past three years have added $1.7 trillion to the 2011-2020 discretionary spending baseline – nearly $1,500 per household annually. In the past year, Pelosi’s House has passed a $700 billion financial bailout and a trillion dollar stimulus, a $1.5 trillion health care expansion, a $200 billion Medicare “doc fix,” and an $800 billion cap-and-trade bill. There is no increase to domestic federal spending that Speaker Pelosi can say “no” to.

It is far past time for responsible leaders in Congress to rein in Pelosi’s profligacy. At a bare minimum, lawmakers should demand that any debt-limit increase also statutorily cap discretionary spending growth at the inflation rate (approximately 2.5 percent annually) for the next decade. Even better, a return to federal spending levels of just a decade ago could go a long way towards solving our debt problem. Heritage’s Brian Riedl explains:

In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, returning to the $25,000 per household level (adjusted for inflation) that Washington spent before the current recession would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes.

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