The Politics of Green

A "Climate Change" Primer

2011-09-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

I've gotten into several discussions lately with friends about climate change. It is not called "Global Warming" anymore, because the science that was being pushed that showed a warming trend has, over the last few years, has been determined to be either flawed, altered or both. Plus, the fact that the oceans are not rising and the earth's temperatures are not going up has put a little crimp in the theory that man's activities on earth are causing harmful, if not catastrophic effects on the planet.

But rather than take it from me, let's look at some of the data that is available. This is not theory, nor is it projections based on computer models. It is historical readings collected from around the earth both current and past, including things like ice cores, sediment samples form the bottom of the sea, etc.

I'll start off with theory vs. historical data. When scientist collect historical data and plot it on a chart over time, it shows us what has happened and, if we've collected enough information over a long enough period, can show us trends and even patterns. When scientists input historical data into a computer model, they must also input certain variables for the computer to build the model. These variables include things like projected temperature increases per year, projected ocean level rise per year, projected CO2 emissions per year, etc. These variables (meaning, a logical set of attributes) are the scientists best guess, using his or her logic, as to what will happen in the future. Thus, the model is an interpretation of past data and future predictions.

Now, models can be useful, but you have to understand that a model is subject to the set of attributes its developer input into it. Think of hurricane track models. You often see a figure with a dozen different colored lines, starting off bunched together, but as they move farther away from the storm, branching out and splitting off every which way; up the east coast, into the gulf, across Mexico, etc. How can there be so many different projections of a storm's path? Different input into each model, by different climatologists, who think different variables carry more importance that another.

Models are predictions, and they are not always correct, because some of the information that generates them are "guesses" as to how a storm, CO2, ocean levels, etc. will behave under a certain set of circumstances. Historical information is different. It has occurred. There is no question. It is not subjective. My discussion here will be about the historical data that has been collected, plotted and studied to determine what earth's average temperature, CO2 levels, etc. have been, and based on historical trends, where it may be going.

Let's start off with average CO2 and temperature over the last, say, 600,000 years. Data collected from glacier ice cores show that the average sea surface temperature over the last 600,00 years was just under 23 degrees Celsius, and the average atmospheric CO2 levels were about 1,000 parts per million (ppm). Today, the atmospheric CO2 level is about 380 ppm, up from the low 200 ppm's at the beginning of the 20th century. Climate alarmists point to the increased use of fossil fuel as the cause of this increase, and tell us that if it continues, the earth's temperature will rise, causing ice caps to melt, making the sea level rise and flooding the earth in coastal areas where billions of humans live. The main problem with this theory is that CO2 is a very minor player in greenhouse gas effect (GHE). GHE is the temperature increase due to elevated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Certain gases, like CO2, water vapor (H2O), methane and nitrogen each have properties that contain or hold in heat radiated back off the earth from the sun. Without these properties, much of the suns heat would bounce off the earth and go back into space, and the earth would be one big ball of ice.

CO2, the gas most climate alarmists have focused on, makes up 0.039% of the total atmospheric gases. Oxygen and nitrogen make up over 99%. CO2 is considered a "trace" gas in the atmosphere. Methane comprises 0.000179% of the atmosphere, yet it's capacity to "hold in" heat is 10 times that of CO2. It is said that the methane produced by the moose population in Maine and Vermont creates more GHE than all the cars in those two states. The largest contributor to GHE? Water vapor. The single thing that most effects earth's temperatures? The earth's position and sun spot activity. Yet, these are not even talked about among climate activists, and ignored in many models.

While climate alarmists focus on man's contribution to CO2 in the environment, the natural causes of CO2 are seldom mentioned. The single largest source of CO2 in the atmosphere is wetlands. The constant biodegradation of plant matter that occurs in a swamps or wetlands around the world creates vast amounts of CO2. One would think that we'd be filling in wetlands left and right to purge the world of this hazard to our existence. Nope. We (humans) actually are incentivized to build them, and penalized by law if we destroy them.

We often hear that the "science is settled" on climate change, or that 98% of all climate scientists believe in anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. Sounds pretty convincing, until you start to dig a little. The term "climate scientist" is ill defined. The jury is still out on how many climate scientist there are and what qualifies one to be called a "climate" scientist.

Here is a petition signed by more than 30,000 scientist, or at least people with some scientific background or degree specific to environmental science, that do not believe there is any evidence that man's activities are causing changed in the earth's temperature.

http://www.petitionproject.org/signers_by_last_name.php

While my degree is in environmental science, I don't think I qualify as a climate scientist. But I do think that I am definitely more qualified that Al Gore, Matt Damon and Alanis Morrissette. I've submitted my signature. We'll see if the Petition Project deems me qualified or not.

The earth cools. The earth warms. CO2 changes are proven to lag many years behind temperature changes. There is a great, easy to understand presentation on what the historical
changes in the earth's climate have been, and what appears to correlate with the changes at

http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Review_Article_HTML.php

How much do you know about climate change? Probably more than the three celebrities I mentioned above. Here's a test you can take (it only takes a few minutes).

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html

After you answer question 6 on the test, look at the chart of global temps and CO2 over the past 600 million years. Looks to me we are on our way up out of a cyclical trough. Just sayin'.

I saw a great presentation by Dr. Patrick Moore a year ago. Dr. Moore is one of the two original founders of Green Peace. He left the organization when they started to get too radical. Dr. Moore discusses the realities of managing the earth's resources, from food production, to climate change. His website has a lot of information about climate change and creating a stable, sustainable world to live in as the population continues to increase.

http://greenspirit.com/index.cfm

See my prior blog about his presentation at:

http://politicsotherstuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/environmentalism-for-21st-centuryor.html

I don't think there is a scientist out there that doesn't believe that man's activities on earth contributes to CO2 in the atmosphere. Those that have maintained an open mind realize that there are many other factors that must be considered before the super powers of the world bring their industrial economies to a grinding halt over the predictions of models that have neglected to take into account data that doesn't support their desired outcome. In fact, when the United Nations issued its climate report, which many countries, including the US, base policy from, they left out much information that did not support man-made climate change, as pointed out by the Director of Meteorology of The Weather Channel, Joseph D'Aleo.

http://newsbusters.org/node/13998

Science used to help steer policy. It seems that now-a-days, it's policy that is steering science.

The Truth About CFLs

2011-02-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

One of the many things we are being told we can do to conserve energy and help the environment is to use compact fluorescent light bulbs, Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) are being billed by the EPA as a great way to cut our home energy costs and “do our part” to conserve energy resources.

EPA’s Energy Star website says “If every American home replaced just one light with a light that's earned the ENERGY STAR, we would save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year, save about $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to those from about 800,000 cars.” They also tout a longer life, and an annual savings – per bulb replaced – of $40 per year.

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=find_a_product.showProductGroup&pgw_code=LB

Sounds great, right? I’m having a hard time believing the 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gases prevented (4.5 million tons) part.

But what’s the real story with CFLs? How long do they really last? Do they really save $40/year each in energy costs? Are they safe? Congress passed an energy bill last year that makes it illegal to manufacture incandescent bulbs (the ones most of us use today) in the US after 2012, so by then, the only type of bulb on the shelf at your local store will be CFLs.

The advertised life expectancy of a CFL is anywhere from 8 to 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb. It is hard to find anything online other than EPA’s and bulb manufacturer’s claims of life expectancy. I was able to find one very detailed study done by a naturalist in Ottawa, Canada.

http://web.ncf.ca/bf250/lamplife.html

He found that the average CFL lasts 1.3 times longer than an incandescent bulb. That seems on par with my personal observations in my home. They appear to last longer in a lamp than in a recessed fixture. All the documentation I could find indicates that the longer intervals they stay “on” the longer they last. When used in areas where they are turned off and on multiple times in a day, the lifespan decreases drastically. At a 1.3x longer life, the 8x higher price seems to negate any long-term energy savings.

Energy and greenhouse gas savings? Well, that becomes a little more complicated, as many of the figures you see try to calculate the energy consumed not only to light the bulb, but the mine the coal to fire the power plant to make the electricity to make the bulb and finally, to light the bulb. I have personally changed out most of the bulbs in my home for CFL, if for no other reason to try out the savings and life expectancy claims. I’ve seen no measurable change in my energy bill. If I’m supposed to see a $40/year savings per bulb, and I’ve installed about 24 bulbs, then the math would indicate my power bill should be about $80 less per month. Not seein’ it.

As an environmental cleanup contractor, with a degree in environmental science, the main thing that concerns me about CFLs is the impact on the environment when bulbs are disposed, either broken or unbroken.

CFLs contain about 5 milligrams of mercury ( a typical home thermometer contained about 250 milligrams of mercury). Mercury has a very low vapor point, meaning that it converts from a solid form (metallic mercury) to a gas form at about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards lists the exposure limit as 0.05 mg/m³. In layman’s terms, if 3 bulbs broke in an average size room, OSHA says you need to put on a respirator (1 bulb would be about 0.02 mg/m³).

In addition to the mercury vapor hazard, the phosphor that is used to coat the inside of the bulb and is what generates the light, is more hazardous than the mercury. Unless every CFL consumer takes their burned out bulbs to a recycler, both the mercury and the phosphor ends up in a landfill. There were 300 million CFLs purchased in the US last year. At 0.05 mg of mercury each, that would be 33 pounds of mercury deposited in landfills across the US annually. That doesn't seem like a lot, but a little mercury goes a long way. I've done cleanups for EPA that cost upwards of $50,000 for less that a pint of mercury spilled in a school and then tracked home by kids.

Long story short, CFLs may sound like a good idea, if you believe what the bulb manufacturers and the EPA say about them. Be careful with them. If one breaks, immediately open some doors and windows. Sweep up the residue and place it in the garbage (recyclers won’t usually take broken bulbs). Find a local recycler (sometimes, the big-box hardware stores will take them back). Stock up on incandescent bulbs before the end of 2012.

A New Direction for Politics & Other Stuff

2011-02-02T10:03:00.001-08:00

When I started this blog over a year ago, I intended it to be a means for me to express my views on current political events. I've decided, after several suggestions from readers, to take this in a little different of a direction. As the new name suggests, I am going to start focusing environmental issues of today, since that is what I know and do for a living. Through the blog, I hope to unravel some of the myths of "green" energy and technology, and expose much of what many consider environmental activism for what it really is: anti-capitalism and manipulation of free markets.

There are so many topics to discuss, so I'll attempt to pick one every week or so (as time permits) and give some background, economics and intent behind many of the issues, technologies and subsidies that are being given out in record numbers. Now keep in mind, I'll be pulling information from many sources, and you will always be able to find some information somewhere that will counter what I've found. I will try to use reputable sources for my information.

I'll start off with a lesson in inter-dependency. We live in a large co-dependent ecosystem. There are lots of sub-systems within the bid system. For every action, there is a equal and opposite reaction. Food is scarce around the world. Food production has decreased over the last decade while population has increased. When you use corn to make fuel instead of feed people, that shortage is exacerbated.

Everyone wants "organic" food. Organic foods generate 1/4th the yield per acre than genetically engineered foods. With the increasing worldwide shortage of foods, we should be planting genetically engineered crops like our lives depended on it (and they well may). Yet organizations like Greenpeace spend millions of dollars lobbying against the use of genetically engineered crops. They say the long term health effects are unknown. Well, we pretty much know what the short term health effects of not using them are. Starvation & death.

We need to look at our environment as one big interdependent ecosystem. When we change one thing, it has an effect somewhere else within the system.

When the government takes tax revenues out of the general fund, and uses them to give subsidies to solar power equipment manufacturers, that money becomes unavailable for use elsewhere in the economy. It could go towards paying down out National debt. It could stay in an entrepreneur's pocket, where it would create a job in an industry that is driven by a competitive market.

As I delve into the various environmental issues, I'll try to keep this interdependency in mind. Too much of what the United States, or the world for that matter, does, they do with blinders on to the unintended consequences of the action.

So, coming up in the next week or so, be on the lookout for my first foray into better educating people on the real environmental issues of our time.

The Missed Signs to Avert a Tragedy

2011-01-14T09:16:00.000-08:00

I hesitate to add my two cents to the fray, but after reading much on Jared Loughner, Sheriff Dupnik, and the rantings of various politicians on the left and the right, I think my two cents is better than theirs.

First of all, the shooting of innocent people is always a tragedy. My heart goes out to the families that have lost loved ones. I can not begin to imagine the grief those families are going through. I'm sure they are all searching for answers, and unfortunately finding few in the incessant finger pointing that has been going on for the past week.

Here's my take on the situation: Loughner was unstable. He had a history of violent or emotional outbursts. He'd been kicked out of college for same, being told that until he had a psychiatric evaluation showing he was not a danger to himself or others, he could not come back. There are reports of multiple visits to his home by the Pima County Sheriff's department, although no one is saying what they were for. This kid was a bomb waiting to explode.

Rep. Gifford's office has records of various correspondence with Loughner dating back to 2007. The FBI found evidence in his home he was specifically targeting her. Take away the fact that she is a US Congresswoman, and this is a textbook case of stalking with a very bad outcome.

Within hours of the incident, the local Sheriff was on the national news blaming conservative talk radio. Congressmen, both Democrat and Republican, began drafting new gun control legislation (in the typical reactionary fashion Congress has become know for). By all rights, the conservative media began defending themselves. This had nothing to do with political vitriol (as has come out in the days after the tragedy in interviews of people that know Loughner). It has everything to do with a mentally disturbed individual who slipped through the system.

Much like the Ft. Hood shooter, this guy exhibited all the signs that people recognized as trouble, but were afraid to act on them. Afraid of liability. Afraid of getting sued. Afraid of retribution. That's where the similarities end. The difference was motivation. Unlike Major Nidal Hassan, who was motivated by political ideology, Loughner was just plain crazy. The commonality was how each of their immediate communities handled the signs of impending trouble.

A friend of mine (who I do not agree with politically) shared a video from Jon Stewart's show with me. And while I can't believe I'm saying this, Stewart appears to be about the only one out there who is drawing the same conclusions as I. "You can not outsmart crazy. Crazy always seems to find a way". He's spot on. The problem is, we make laws based on logic and the assumption that people will follow them. But if that were the case, we wouldn't need police. Our laws draw on a basic concept that life has value. Much like with the 9-11 hijackers, we found that is a fatal flaw in our logic. Our concept of life value is much different than that of a lunatic.

It would be a further tragedy if we did not learn from this one. Much like we are taught to always be aware of our surroundings....situational awareness, it's called..., we need to make sure that when we see or hear something that make the hair on the back of our necks stand up, we let someone know.

There were plenty of signs this kid was unstable and capable of harming someone. No one did anything about it. That's the lesson here.

On another note, I saw an interview with one of the men who ran to the scene and helped disarm and hold down Loughner. He was carrying a weapon with a valid concealed carry permit. He said he approached with his hand on his gun, safety off. He saw a man standing there with a gun in his hand and yelled "Drop it!". The person did. It was not Loughner. Loughner was already on the ground. Within seconds, the two men came to an understanding of who was who, and recovered Loughner's gun and kept him on the ground. The young man never pulled his own gun from the holster. He exhibited excellent judgement and poise under the conditions. My regards to him for doing so, and showing that ordinary citizens can carry firearms in a responsible manner.

What's the Real Story behind the "Income Gap"

2010-12-24T06:05:00.000-08:00

We've heard quite a lot lately about the growing "income gap" in the United States. The gap between "rich" and "poor". How the "rich are getting richer and the poor poorer". Every time you turn on the national news you hear about the "income gap" and how conservative tax policies are making the rich richer, and leaving the middle class and poor behind. Since when is hard work, sacrifice and postponing today's wants for tomorrow's needs a bad thing. Somewhere along the line, someone coined the phrase "filthy rich", and most of America has bought into it. "Rich" has become a dirty word, and the definition of how much money makes one "rich" is getting lower and lower.

The liberals in this country claim that the income gap is widening. They claim that the reason is the "Bush Tax Cuts", conservative tax policies favoring the rich, etc.

Well, I'm not an economist or a sociologist, but there are plenty of them out there that have long proven the theory that "if you want more of something, subsidize it."

I contend that the reason the income gap is widening is two-fold: first, there are more people moving up from middle-class to upper-class, creating a smaller middle-class and larger upper-class, and second, the US government has made being poor too easy by creating billions of dollars of subsidy programs so that the poor stay poor. What incentive does someone on welfare, section 8 housing, food stamps and now 3 years of unemployment have to actually go back to work and become a contributing member of society? Very little.

The government throws so much money at the "poor" that they have absolutely no incentive to try to raise their standard of living to get into the middle-class. So much so that we have multiple generations of families that have never know anything but welfare.

We in America don't know poor. The people we call poor have a roof over their head (subsidized), heat in the winter and AC in the summer (subsidized), have cable TV, a car, a cell phone, and are, per capita, the most over-weight segment of the American society, so clearly they've got plenty of food (also subsidized). In Macon, Georgia this week, there was a news story of a "poor" woman (who looked to weigh about 350 pounds) being interviewed on the news because she, her sister and her mom had stood in line for 4 hours trying to get financial assistance to pay their electric bill, but were turned away. She was being interviewed in her living room. In one hand, her electric bill. In the other, her cell phone. Behind her? A 52-inch plasma TV. Under the TV and visible in the shot? A Playstation and a stack of games about a foot tall.

It's about choices, People. Priorities and choices. Some of us choose to not spend money on "wants" until the "needs" are taken care of. Some of us don't. Those who don't typically think that those of us who do should have to help them out of their mess. Unfortunately, if you ask them about where the money comes from, they'll tell you "the Government". They have no idea that it comes from you and me, because they've never had to contribute into the system, and our federal government does a great job of keeping facts from its constituents.

Let's look at the subsidy thing another way. I find it a little amusing (and scary) that I have not heard this theory on any news show or read about it in any newspaper or internet news source, liberal or conservative:

The November unemployment numbers went up from 9.6% to 9.9%, but the overall number of unemployed did not change. Hmmm. Think about that for a minute. There are two unemployment categories; those actively looking for job, and those that have just given up. The 9.9% number is made up only of those actively looking. Those that have given up are not a part of that number (when you add them into the equation, National unemployment is really 17-18%). If the overall number didn't change, but the "actively looking" number did, would one not surmise that some of the people that were previously not looking decided to start looking again?

But, why would they do that all of the sudden? Unless Congress passed PresBo's 13 month extension to unemployment benefits, benefits were going to run out on those that had been on them the longest. I hypothesize that as their benefits were about to run out, they decided that it was time to get off their asses and start looking for a job again. The government handout was about to run out. The "subsidy" was being discontinued.

Now, again, I'm not an economist, nor a prognosticator, but I will bet that when the December numbers come out, the number drops back down to the 9.6% range. Now that Congress has passed, and PresBo signed the 13 month extension to unemployment benefits, they don't need to actually start looking for a job again for another 10 or 11 months.

My guess would be that if we stopped subsidizing unemployment, we'd get less of it. If we'd stop subsidizing the poor, we'd get less of it.

Look for People, Not Things (or, TSA - Our Business is getting all up in yours)

2010-11-24T16:58:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, my loyal followers (all 5 of you!). Blog-time for me has been coming sparingly lately, but as I sit home this Thanksgiving eve, the busiest travel day in America, I can't help but stew over the latest loss of civil liberties our federal government has imposed upon the traveling public - the "Enhanced Pat-down".

The enhanced pat-down has superseded the manual wanding at airport security check points. If you've been living under a rock the last couple of weeks, these pat-downs involve very invasive frisking of air travelers, including on, around and under women's breasts, and of men's and women's crotches. There does not seem to be much rhyme or reason as to whom they subject to these pat-downs, and internet video has surfaced of TSA agents patting down small children, some while screaming and crying "Don't touch me!"

The excuse the feds are giving the public is that these procedures are necessary because of last Christmas' underwear bomber. Apparently, they weren't concerned enough about it until the last couple of weeks to start using the procedure. Basically, when you enter an airport security check point, all your Constitutional rights vanish.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

So, according to the document that provides the framework for all federal laws in the United States, in order for my "person" to be searched, there must first be probable cause, and then a warrant must be sworn out, specifically describing the places to be searched, etc. I'd like to know what probable cause the TSA has to initiate searches upon people in this way.

If a teacher, janitor, or boss touched someone in this way, it would be sexual assault, and criminal charges would be filed. Millions of people will have their 4th Amendment rights violated this holiday weekend, and the ACLU is nowhere to be found on the issue. They and the Democrats were screaming 4th Amendment when Bush 43 and the Republicans were passing the Patriot Act. All we hear now from them are crickets chirping.

The Atlantic magazine published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist whose been constantly testing TSA around the country by sneaking onto planes with "contraband", seeing if he'll get caught.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-things-he-carried/7057/

In his non-scientific research, he has determined that the TSA's procedures aren't really making us safer, they are just designed to make us think we are safer. Please take the time to read at the above link.

The jist of the article is that we need to start looking for people, not things. He's forged boarding passes, worn shirts with Islamic jihad slogans, even worn a neoprene "beerbelly" flask that holds 80 ounces of liquid under his shirt, all just to prove that what TSA is doing is not working.

The Israelis have a system that work. They have what is widely recognized as the safest airport security in the world. What do they do to achieve this? They talk to people. They are trained to identify people acting suspicious, and pull them aside for additional screening. I've heard people say that "Israel is a small country...we could never do that here because of the magnitude of air travelers." It's scalable, people. Hey, if we can spare millions of dollars of taxpayer money to study the mating habits of wharf rats, we can fund a better system of security that will actually keep us safer.

Did you know that even though you are only allowed to carry 3oz bottles of liquid, packed in a ziplock bag, that you can carry large bottle of saline solution for contacts? It does not even have to be in the original bottle, just labeled "Saline". Any old Sharpie will do. You think I'm kidding, right? I wish I were.

So, it appears there are exceptions to every rule. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has provided a guidance document to muslim women traveling in America that they should "opt-out" of the full body screen and offer to pat themselves down.

http://www.cair.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArticleID=26681&&name=n&&currPage=1

Ridiculous, right. Not so, says TSA Chief John Pistole. Muslim women are allowed to "self pat down". That's the policy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101121/ap_on_bi_ge/us_airport_security_5

Apparently, "policy" requires that 3-year old little girls get the full pat down, as seen in this video captured at the Chattanooga airport this week.

http://www.newser.com/story/105351/tsa-pats-down-3-year-old.html

Are we as a nation really so caught up in political correctness that we are willing to forego common sense and logic completely? Call it what you want...profiling, whatever, but until our government comes to grips with the fact that it is a specific ethnicity, age and cultural group that is committing the terrorist acts around the world in the 21st century, safe air travel will be an oxymoron.

Is Campaigning Really Part of the Job Description?

2010-10-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

One of my friends was traveling home to see family in Pennsylvania this weekend. As his USAir flight landed in Philadelphia, the plane came to an abrupt halt as it pulled off the active runway. There they sat for about 15 minutes, until the captain came over the loud speaker and announced they'd be sitting there until further notice because President Obama was about to land, and the airport was on shutdown until he arrived and was cleared to a secured area. No planes were allowed to take off or land during this time. An hour later, they were given the OK to proceed to the gate.

Looking out the window of the plane, he observed Air Force one, three C130 Air Force cargo planes, and four "Marine One" helicopters assembling in the distance. The C130's opened up and all of the autocade vehicles emerged, loaded up and headed off to somewhere in Delaware so the President could stump for a Democratic candidate in a tight race.

Philosophically and fiscally, I have a couple problems with this event. Number one, the negative impact to businesses and people was at best unnecessary; the business loss cost for everyone affected is indicative of the "elite" status that pervades today's federal government. The Philadelphia airport was shut down for over an hour. Every airline impacted incurred additional cost, at a minimum for extra fuel needed to circle above for the hour. Every business that relies on air travel and the money spent by passengers suffered during this time. The ripple effect of the delays was felt throughout the country as the delays caused ground holds, etc. Why couldn't the President have landed at a nearby military base instead (there are several)? I don't know how to calculate the lost dollars, but I'm sure the number is in the millions.

Now, the philosophical part. Obama is the President. His salary (and that of everyone in his entourage, including the military staff, secret service, etc.) is paid by you and me. Instead of "faithfully executing the duties of the office of the President", as he swore to do, he's off politicking for someone. How can any taxpayer think this is a valid activity while we are paying his salary. It would be no different than one of my salaried employees taking on a side job one day a week, while I was paying his or her salary.

Trips to meet foreign heads of state, OK; that's in the interest of America, and part of his responsibility. Vacations, OK; most of us get a paid vacation every now and then (although Obama seems to be on the expanded plan). Spending taxpayer dollars to fly a 4 plane and 4 helicopter entourage to Philly so he can campaign for someone....not in the job description.

I Googled "cost of Air Force One". The estimated cost to fly Air Force One (only) is $55,000 to $60,000 per hour. The United States General Accounting Office published a report in 2000 that states that in a 3 year period (1997 - 2000) the White House spent $292 million on 159 trips. Of these, the President's 27 trips account for 85% of the cost. Using simple math (any you'll have to use your scientific calculators, the standard desktop versions don't go that high), 85% of $292 million is $248 million. $248 million divided by 27 trips is about $9.2 million per trip. This is in August 2000 dollars, not adjusted for inflation.

The full report can be found at http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/ns00209.pdf.

So, campaign finance laws aside, Chris Coons, the Democratic candidate for governor of Delaware just had the President of the United States, so by default, the US taxpayers, donate $9.2 million to his campaign.

In 2006, US Representative Henry Waxman (D) published a report with the goal of getting then President Bush to reimburse the Treasury for his travel expenses related to campaigning. Shouldn't Mr. Waxman be equally concerned with the same mis-use of taxpayer dollars, regardless of which President is abusing them?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=94f_1234653724

So here we are people, two weeks away from the mid-term elections. Are we going to sit around and let this abuse of our hard-earned tax dollars continue? Or are we going to let our voices be heard through the ballot box? I'm not talking just replacing the current party in power with the same Washington bureaucrats, just with a different initial in parenthesis behind their names; I'm talking about wholesale change. The people we send to Washington need to be of the same mindset as the people they were elected by.

Our country is on the brink of financial disaster. Nothing has been done to ease credit/lending for small businesses, which generate 85% of all jobs in the economy. Nothing has been done to fix the toxic mortgage mess created by Democrats and Republicans alike over the last 20 years. Our national debt continues to escalate, with the party in power thinking we can spend our way out of a recession (quick poll here...does that work for any of us, or is going further and further in debt generally a bad thing?). Tax rates for most of us are about to go up.

The Federal budget deficit was recently reported to be the highest ever in history at $1.3 Trillion. That is 1,300-billion. 1,300,000-Million. Not even my scientific calculator goes that high without using the exponent function key (that's 1.3xE12, by the way).

Environmentalism for the 21st Century..or A Voice of Reason in a Field of Alarmist

2010-09-18T14:54:00.001-07:00

This past week, geeks with their pocket protectors from around the United States and from a few far off countries met to share information and network at the Alliance of Hazardous Materials Managers National Conference in Atlanta. All joking aside, I've been going to the AHMP annual conference for many years, and this one was one of the best, primarily due to the speech presented by Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace.

Now one may think that a co-founder of a sometimes quite extreme environmental activist group like Greenpeace would be spitting fire and brimstone about all of the ills we are doing to our planet. Dr. Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986 when the organization started becoming too extreme for him, explained that he'd been "against" so many things for so long, it was time to start being "for" some things.

Dr. Moore is considered one of the founders of the environmental movement. He is an ecologist by degree (Ph.D), and has become a thorn in the sides of environmental alarmists for many years. His general philosophy appears to be "science is good, use it wisely". He has taken a stance against the environmental alarmists on many fronts, from DDT use in third world countries, to anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. In this post, I'd like to share some of the positions he's taken on some of the key environmental issues of our time.

We'll start with the big one. Global Warming. Moore calls global warming the "most difficult issue facing the scientific community today in terms of being able to actually predict with any kind of accuracy what's going to happen". He has argued that there is "no scientific proof" that mankind is causing global warming. In his presentation this week, he discussed CO2 increases in the atmosphere. Yes, they are increasing. They are currently around 450 parts per million (ppm) in the air we breath. If you look at the average going back over 6 billion years, from cores taken from glaciers and other scientifically valid means, it is about 2,000 to 2,500 ppm. He stated that life would become very difficult on the planet at 200 ppm (trees die, stop producing oxygen, you get the picture). Greenhouse operators actually pump exhaust from their heaters back into the houses to raise the CO2 levels, as they've found that 1,500 - 2,000 produces the best plant growth. He contends that if the current upward trend in atmospheric CO2 is caused by man, then we should continue to pump it out, as without it, we'd be headed down toward that 200 level.

http://www.greenspirit.com/21st_century.cfm?msid=29&page=14

He calls Al Gore an alarmist, and says he should be ashamed of himself for propagating lies and false information in his movies, books and speeches, that Mr. Gore knows the science (or lack thereof) and is choosing to ignore it for profit.

Deforestation and genetically engineered foods, because they kind of go hand-in-hand. Moore says that the primary cause of deforestation is food production and urban sprawl, not the timber industry. As population grows, we need to grow more food. We have to clear more forest land to do so. Moore is actually very much for managed forestry, and has served on the boards of many forestry industry associations. He believes one of the reasons that food takes so much room to grow is that organizations like Greenpeace, the World Health Organization, and others, protest and refuse to accept the use of genetically engineered foodstuffs. "Organic" vegetables produce about one quarter the yield per acre as genetically engineered vegetables. Grow four times the food in a quarter of the space, save the forests. He also believes that society needs to "build up, not out", to limit urban sprawl.

One of the most interesting segments of Dr. Moore's speech was about genetically engineered rice. Rice is the primary carbohydrate for over 60% of the world's population. Rice is also pretty much devoid of any vitamins. A Swiss scientist has developed a way to "stack" vitamins into a kernel of rice, effectively making it a vitamin pill. Why is this important? Over 500,000 children each year go blind in third world countries because of vitamin A deficiencies. This genetically modified rice would cure that. But environmental groups like Greenpeace call it poison.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/agriculture/problem/genetic-engineering/

http://www.greenspirit.com/21st_century.cfm?msid=29&page=12

In fact, they think ANY genetic engineering is bad, yet offer no alternative solution to the growing problem of world hunger and disease. In fact, there is no know detrimental effect of genetically engineered foods. But apparently, scaring humanity into thinking they are poison trumps saving the vision of 500,000 children a year.

Alternative/Renewable Energy. Many environmental activists believe that our future lies in wind and solar energy. It may someday, but until the science behind both grows in leaps and bounds, it will probably not be in my lifetime. Solar cells produce energy at about $0.70 per kilowatt. Wind costs about $0.30/kilowatt. Coal produces electricity at a cost of about $0.01/kilowatt. So not only are solar and wind very expensive, but they are only effective about 20% of the time. The best energy source available to the world today? Nuclear. Nuclear produces electricity at about $0.02/kilowatt, but produces no CO2. Do if Greenpeace and Al Gore were really concerned about CO2 in the atmosphere, they'd be pushing nuclear energy. The United States is 30 years behind some European countries, like France, in nuclear energy production. France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear.

Spent Nuclear Fuel. This is another area where the U.S. has missed the boat. The U.S. does not reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods. Fuel reprocessing recycles 95% of spent fuel, cutting our waste requiring long-term disposal by that 95%. All of France's nuclear waste from 30 years of energy production, in a country that gets 80% of its energy from nuclear, is stored in the basement of one of their nuclear energy facilities. Basically, we would not need a "Yucca Mountain" capable of storing vast amounts of spent fuel rods.

Dr. Moore was fascinating to hear speak. He currently has a book out, "Trees Are the Answer". Although his speech was less than an hour and a half, he's got me hooked. Finally, a voice of reason, with science behind it.

The following link is to Dr. Moore's full speech "Environmentalism for the 21st Century", of which he gave an abbreviated version at the AHMP conference. It is well worth the read.

http://www.greenspirit.com/21st_century.cfm

Lowering the Bar

2010-09-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

Since when, in this great Country of ours, has it become the norm to "lower the bar" instead of raise the bar? I'm talking about the many stories we hear on the news about how different segments of our society have decided that when a minority - and I don't mean ethnic - complains or under-performs, rather than making them work harder for success, we "change the rules" so their feelings don't get hurt.

My first recollection of this "phenomena" was when my son was starting grade school and started playing soccer at the YMCA. There was no score kept for the games, because "it would be hard on the losers self esteem".

Then came grades in school. Instead of traditional A-F, they started with "Satisfactory" and "Needs Improvement".

Today on my way to work, a story was reported of a school in Massachusetts that is doing away with final exams in lieu of the teachers providing an "assessment of progress". The reporter stated that "The students interviewed thought it was an excellent idea". No-Duh! What high school kid wouldn't want to get out of finals.

I wonder how colleges are going to interpret "Satisfactory" on a transcript to determine their GPA over other applicants from states that still give grades?

This goes beyond athletics and scholastics, to full blown political correctness. The recent flap over the mosque at Ground Zero and the Florida preacher that is threatening to burn the Koran is a prime example. Rather than stick to our guns on letting a mosque be built on what is hallowed ground in our Nation, we cow-tow to a minority so as not to hurt their feelings. Let's see someone try to build a Synagogue a couple of blocks from Mecca. But in the good 'ole USA, the door doesn't swing both ways!

We're OK with flag burning, book burning, bible burning, building a mosque as a symbol of triumph over the infidels at ground zero, having US presidents burned in effigy, the Arab world rejoicing on every TV channel as 3000 Americans burned or were crushed to death as the Towers fell; That's freedom of expression. Freedom of religion. But by God, don't dare burn a Koran!

I'm have become fatigued with the US and Christians in general having to walk on eggshells around a religion that doesn't openly condemn its own when they act with aggression, cut off journalists heads, stone women for being raped, riot because of political cartoons, etc. The mainstream media tells us "that is the radicals - a small percentage of the Muslim population". Sorry, but you don't see the rest of "moderate" Islam standing up and condemning these actions.

When soldiers can't speak out about a fellow soldier (Nidal Malik Hasan) who openly professes to radical Islamic views, has a business card that says "Soldier of Islam" on it, and then proceeds to gun down 13 fellow soldiers, because they are afraid they'll be labeled racist, we have a problem. Even better...when the FBI announced he'd been emailing with Anwar Al-Awlaki, our attorney general, Eric Holder, stated that "we can't arrest someone just because they are corresponding with a terrorist". At what point do we say that political correctness has gone too far?

We are committing national suicide in the name of political correctness, and the people the Left are trying to impress are laughing at us all the way to our grave.

Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew. We need to start acting like it.

Is History Destined to Repeat Itself (or.. Political Correctness will be Our Demise)

2010-07-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

I recently updated my Facebook status with a portion of a quote from Sarah Palin, commenting on the intended plans to build a mosque within a stone's throw of Ground Zero in Manhattan. The blog stirred some very intelligent insight and conversation amongst several of my friends. I though it would be worth sharing. I've edited it to make it less a conversation of posts, and more an essay....let me know what you think. Thanks to all who contributed....you know who you are!

"No one is disputing that America stands for – and should stand for – religious tolerance. It is a foundation of our republic. This is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common moral sense. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks." ~ Sarah Palin

We do claim to be a Nation of religious tolerance. In fact, our Constitution give us the freedom to practice any religion we want. As Americans, we must recognize that freedom and those faiths. But how can we recognize a faith that sends it's men, women and children into the streets to perform such atrocities that it can only spawn from the loins of something really bad in all of us, evil if you will.

And I don't mean the little red guy with the horns and tail. I am talking about the voice, or thought that comes to us when we are ready to cut in front of someone in line when we know they are next, or cheat on our taxes when we know that it is wrong. That, in my opinion is our faith. A higher power that tells us when something is wrong or right.

So how can we as a nation, based on such faith, recognize Islam. Hell, and I say it with all irony intended, the people in this country who worship Satan do not blow up their fellow citizens in the name of the the little red guy. But Islam does almost everyday some where in the world. So I agree with all tolerances of all religions. I am just not sure we should give Islam their green card yet.

Can you really call something a religion that has so little value for human life, so little regard for its fellow man, and so much hate as its basis for existence?

That anyone would even consider building a mosque at Ground Zero baffles me. Why is this even a topic of discussion? It's insulting to the families of all who were murdered on that horrible day. That the City of New York has even let it get to the point of national discussion is scary.

The Qur'an is suppose to be the verbatim word of the One and incomparable God? Or something like that? Didn't Satan think he was more powerful than God? Did he not think of himself, as God?

I believe that there is a right and a wrong, a good and bad. Moreover I believe one does not exist without the other. So if there is a book of God, surely there is a script of an opposing faith?

And what better way to soften our faith in the good of all mankind than by raising our tolerance for the mass murdering of our fellow men and women on the streets of the world.

The loss of life is tragic. I can't imagine how this culture of fellow human beings feel when they lose a family member in such a way! But worse yet I think, is the hatred it leaves behind. In all cultures, such as ours who witness it on a daily basis through the media, don't we all wish, sometimes that these crazy bastards would just blow themselves up? Especially when a friend, or worse yet, a relative loses a child.

Do you think that it is "good" that spawns such an act, to create such a thought by so many? And it will be the worlds tolerance and acceptance of these acts of evil that will one day, if not stopped afford us the thinking we have the right to stand in judgment of all people of middle eastern heritage. What happens when one group of nations, people, cultures think they have the right under the influence of decades of mass murders to kill one another to save themselves.

Wasn't there a little guy from Austria in the 30s that felt the exact same way many radical Muslims feel today? What were his thoughts on the value of human life? Didn't he think there was one faith, or race that was better than the other, based on what was it, misguided religion?

Is what Hitler did to the Jews different than what radical muslims are doing to each other, and would do to us given the opportunity? Is Iran's president's outspoken declaration that he wants to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth any different?

Many people have said over the last 50 years that if the world had known sooner what Hitler was doing to the Jews, all nations would have acted faster and differently. I wonder. We see women and little girls deformed in the name of Islam. We see suicide bombers walk into a crowed market or get onto buses and blow themselves up killing many. Everyday, in almost every major publication in the world we see, hear and witness some of the same kinds of atrocities. Have we not learned anything? Are we doing anything different as a Global Community. I wonder.

Wealth Redistribution and Health Care Rationing

2010-07-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the near future, someone you know is going to be faced with a life threatening illness. They will have a sick family member. They will go to the doctor, and will be told that the universal health care plan will not pay for the most effective treatment for their illness. You'll question why, and be told that some group of bureaucrats in Washington have decided that that treatment is too expensive, or too experimental, or their age is outside the prescribed age range/cost-benefit table, or some other sort of nonsense.

You will sit there and wonder "how our country came to this?" "How did the best healthcare system in the world degrade to this point?" What was I doing when the fabric of our country was being changed.

I can answer your question. On July 7, 2010, Americans were immersed in watching the 52 minutes of coverage given by the national news networks on the morning news shows about how a troubled young star, Lindsey Lohan, had been sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating her parole agreement. On this very day, the same national networks spent a combined 20 seconds talking about PresBo's recess appointment of Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid ~ our nation's new Health Care Czar.

America spends more time paying attention to sports and entertainment and little to no time paying attention to the outright attacks on the American way of life happening right under our noses.

So just who is this Donald Berwick that was appointed without so much as even a single interview or hearing in front of Congress?

I think I can best illustrate this by quoting Mr. Berwick from some of his speeches over the last couple of years. These quotes help to illustrate his contempt for capitalism, his support of health care rationing, and his delusion that the British National Health System is a model which the US should emulate.

"You cap your health care budget, and you make the political and economic choices you need to make to keep affordability within reach."

"A progressive policy regime will control and rationalize financing—control supply."

"For-profit, entrepreneurial providers of medical imaging, renal dialysis, and outpatient surgery, for example, may find their business opportunities constrained."

"I would place a commitment to excellence—standardization to the best-known method—above clinician autonomy as a rule for care."

"The U.K has people in charge of its health care—people with the clear duty and much of the authority to take on the challenge of changing the system as a whole. The U.S. does not."

"I am romantic about the National Health Service," he told a London audience in 2008, referring to the British single-payer system. "I love it,"

"the primary functions" of health regulation is "to constrain decentralized, individual decision making" and "to weigh public welfare against the choices of private consumers."

"The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, he told an interviewer according to the Associated Press. "The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."

And my favorite......

“Any health care funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”

So, on one hand, we have the Democrats telling us to trust them, that Obamacare will not ration care, and on the other, we have PresBo appointing someone that will ultimately oversee the new law saying that he strongly believes in rationing. And not only that, but in order to "make it work", that wealth redistribution needs to be a part of it.

Sounds a little socialistic to anyone?

I did not bother to insert links to the above quotes, but each of them will come up in various news articles if Googled.

This takes me back to some of my previous posts. This president is attempting to take the U.S. into uncharted territory that has uncanny resemblance to a socialistic society. If it were just one of his key advisers that was way radical left, we might chalk it up to poor judgment, poor vetting or just an oversight. But this guy has surrounded himself with some of the most radical left advisers of any president in history.

I challenge you to take an hour or so and research even just a few of these people:

Manufacturing Czar - Ron Bloom. Formerly an official with the United Steelworkers Union.

Regulatory Czar - Cass Sunstein. Former professor of 27 years at University of Chicago. He is anti-gun, anti-hunting, and believes animals should have rights, too!

FCC Diversity Czar - Mark Lloyd. Lloyd called Hugo Chavez' takeover of Venezuela "an incredible revolution, a Democratic revolution." Lloyd was quoted as saying "the only mechanism that can help us improve society is government".

Global Warming Czar - Carol Browner. Browner was listed by The Socialist International as a leader of their Commission for a Sustainable World Society.

Science and Technology Czar - John Holdren. Holdren declared that "global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion people by 2020".

Safe School Czar - Kevin Jennings. Jennings founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and has been quotes as saying he admires the founder of NAMBLA. NAMBLA's goal (from their website homepage) is "to end the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships".

Van Jones, Green Jobs Czar (resigned): Mr. Jones was signatory to a petition that claimed George Bush and Dick Cheney were behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

It is up to the American People to take back control of this government, because after all, it was established as a government "of the People, by the People, for the People."

The Job and Economic Recovery That Isn't

2010-07-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

Thomas Jefferson said, "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Too bad nobody listened.

If you listen to NBC, CBS ABC and the White House Press office, the economy is turning around. Jobs are being created or saved. We're on the road to recovery.

If you listen to those who actually create jobs and drive growth in the economy, they are hunkering down for the next dip of a "double-dip" recession.

For the recovery to gain steam, most economists believe small businesses need to be strong enough to hire new workers. But according to one measure, the employment picture in this sector is weakening.

Intuit Inc., which provides payroll services for small employers, says the nation's tiniest companies(those with 19 or less employees) had fewer new hires last month than any time since October of 2009 This is troubling to economists, because it is companies this size that generally leap out front in job creation with bigger companies lagging behind. These businesses provide a full one-sixth of all jobs in the U.S.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0709-smallbiz-slowdown-20100709,0,1513075.story

As the second dagger to the heart of the economic recovery, the Washington Post repored this week that companies are sitting on almost $2 Trillion of cash, instead of investing or hiring, because they want to see what and how Obamacare, Cap & Trade, and other business restrictive legislation that has either passed or is proposed is going to affect their business before they spend that money to grow or hire.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/05/AR2009110505221.html

So we have two actual, measurable occurrences that are a direct result of Obama policy. Arthur Laffer, a respected economist, recently described why he thinks we are headed to the second dip, this one worse than the first. Here is his logic, and it is backed up by historical analysis of tax rate increases and decreases: When taxes are scheduled to go up (as in 2011), companies will accelerate earnings so they have to pay less taxes on them before the increase. When taxes are slated to go down, (as in when the Reagan tax cuts were to go into effect in 1981), companies will delay earnings so when they do earn the money, they''ll pay less in taxes.

Based on this logic, Mr. Laffer predicts that the modest (at best) positive activity we are seeing in the economy right now is companies accelerating their earnings into 2010, so they can pay taxes at the 2010 rates instead of at the new, higher, Obama 2011 rates that will go into effect on January 1, 2011. When 2011 arrives, companies will slow down productivity so they make less/pay less taxes, until they see some sign that government will ease up on business. This will include sitting on cash, cutting back on investment and growth, and shedding jobs.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5475490/arthur_laffer_tax_hikes_to_cause_double.html?cat=9

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise sharply. President Bush's tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go to 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. If you are going to die, die this year!

One thing that the Democrats don't seem to get, is that history doesn't lie, and that it will repeat itself unless you change the inputs. The path the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress is going down has been trod before. The outcome is predictable. It is not going to be pretty.

Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste

2010-06-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

So...This one is right up my alley. I'm in the environmental cleanup business. This stuff I know. So why is the Obama administration stonewalling the gulf cleanup?

In the last week, Senator George Lemieux of Florida, said that he asked President Obama why some of the 2000 oil skimming vessels stationed around the US had not been deployed to the Gulf spill, the President responded "We can't take them from where they're stationed because they might have a spill there and might need them." Uh, we currently have a spill in the Gulf, and we need them there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3qJaDbw5s8

You have got to be kidding me! Not only is the Obama administration being negligent in not providing all available resources to help cleanup the oil spill, but they are also turning down international help to do so. According to Senator LeMeiux, the Dutch government has offered their skimming vessels no less than 21 times in the last 2 months, and been turned down each time.

So one has to wonder....why would the President not use all available resources to help contain this spill? What motives might he have in doing so? Is he doing it to further is Cap and Trade agenda? PresBo's Chief of Staff, Rhom Emmanuel, said "Never let a crisis go to waste." Well, I believe this is exactly what is going on. Why else would PresBo decline international help and not deploy all available resources to the Gulf?

If this is not a blatant attempt at "taking advantage of the crisis", it is, at a minimum, gross negligence, dereliction of duty, and plain and simple lack of leadership.

In my career as an environmental contractor, I have cleaned up several oil spills. I understand the technology available. I have used some of it. Why we haven't engaged the use of the available technology and resources is beyond me. It is available. We do have the technology to contain and control this spill.

According to the above mentioned interview with Senator LeMieux, the Dutch government has offered their open-water, high-volume skimmers to the US Government no less than 21 times in the last 2 months, each time being turned down.

Again, why would PresBo not take advantage of all available resources, unless he doesn't actually want the spill cleaned up quickly. This man clearly has an agenda, and it is not what is in the best interest of the Gulf states.

There is one way to stop this destructive behavior. Vote in November. Vote all of them out of office and put in their place people who will honor the limits on government the Constitution put in place. It is up to us, People. We have the power. We must use it wisely. Elections have consequences. I don't think any of us believed they would be so dramatic in such a short amount of time.

Bending the Health Care Cost Curve - But Which Way?

2010-06-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi said “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy." We'll we're a few months down the road, and we are all starting to find out exactly what she meant.

Last week, Medicare's Chief Actuary, Richard Foster, released his analysis of the bill that blasted PresBo's claims of "bending the cost curve downward". For starters, his analysis projected Americans would pay $120 million in fines for not having adequate coverage, and 14 million Americans would lose their existing coverage as rising costs lead to companies dumping health insurance as a benefit.

According to Mr. Foster's findings, doctors would begin to refuse new patients, and one out of every six hospitals and nursing homes would begin to lose money. Sick people will begin to face higher drug and device prices, and everyone would have to pay higher premiums - all of which are exactly opposite of what PresBo said would happen.

See his report here: http://bit.ly/90Lwt7

Ok, some of you may ask, "who is this "hack", Mr. Foster?" He is the guy the government pays to evaluate impacts to Medicare due to new legislation and changes in the medical industry.

Mr. Foster is not alone! The Congressional Budget Office - you know, the guys who review legislation before it becomes a bill, and "score" it to see what it's cost impact will be - released a report in May stating that it's updated projects for the Health Care bill costs were $115 Billion (with a "B") higher than previously estimated.

See the revised projections here: http://bit.ly/bY5Eup

But wait! There's more! In October 2010, the first round of cuts to Medicare are due. Up to 50% of seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage coverage, or at least some of the benefits under the program. Congress had to make this cut to keep the price tag of the bill under the "magic" $1 Trillion mark. Knowing that if they ACTUALLY cut care to seniors, they'd be placing themselves on a chopping block come November, they have inserted a provision in a pending "jobs" bill to offset this cut in Medicare (see my previous post).

According to a survey done by Towers Watson, a human resource consulting company, 88% of companies expect their health care costs to rise, and intend to pass on the cost increases to their employees.

http://bit.ly/c0CPRL

The survey indicated that 74% planned to reduce benefits, and up to 12% will drop coverage all together. 43% of employers that provide retiree benefits plan to reduce or eliminate them.

As an employer, I do not intend to wait until the last minute to "spring" this on my employees. I will make sure all of my employees understand why the costs are going up and benefits going down, and you can bet that I will not wait until after the November elections to do so.

What's In a Name?

2010-05-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Congress has yet another big spending bill in the works. Have you ever noticed how the name of a bill often insinuates the exact opposite of what is actually in the bill? This time it is no different.

The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act is starting to make its way through Congress. Only one problem: It doesn't create any jobs, and it doesn't close any tax loopholes.

What it does do is pick up the funding slack left out of the Health Care Bill needed to keep the bill under the "magic" $1 Trillion cost. If you remember, Obamacare eliminated the "Doctor Fix" in Medicare/Medicaid - the provision that annually decreased what those programs paid doctors for their services - as one of the ways to get the anticipated cost of the bill down. Opponents of Obamacare argued that the Doctor Fix has been in effect for years, and every year, the medical lobby succeeds in getting Congress to "waive" it. That there was no way that Congress will allow it to actually be implemented (odd thought there...actually implementing a bill that you voted for). It has never been implemented.

The largest component of the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes bill is a $65 billion supplement to Medicare physicians payments to offset the decrease in funds resulting from the Doctor Fix. Do you feel like you are an unwitting participant of a shell game?

Here are the other major items of the bill:

Unemployment Insurance - $47 Billion
Medicaid Payment to States - $24 Billion
Build America Bonds - $24 Billion
Health Care for Unemployed - $7.8 Billion
Payments to Minority Farmers - $4.6 Billion
Welfare Payments - $2.8 Billion
Aid to Localities - $2.8 Billion
Disaster Relief for Farmers - $1.5 Billion
Low Income Housing Subsidies - $1.1 Billion
Summer Jobs - $1.0 Billion - Oh! There's the "Jobs" part!
Small Business Loans - $0.5 Billion

Of the $190 Billion in spending this bill includes, the last two items, summer jobs, and small business loans, are the only to that are even close to something that will "create" jobs.

Here's an idea, Congress: suspend last year's minimum wage increase to $7.25/hr. I bet a lot of those teens will be called back to work.

The unemployment benefits in the bill will extend the time you can receive payment to 99 weeks - almost 2 years! In the words of one of my favorite visionaries, "Excuse me if I'm wrong, Sandy", but isn't the purpose of unemployment to help you through a tough time until you can find another job? Not a "sit on my ass for a year and a half, then start looking" benefit.

Jim McDermott (D) actually declared on the House floor that jobless payments are "one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus because every unemployment dollar spent returns $1.64 of economic benefit." If that's the case, let's lay everyone off and watch the economy explode! Yes, this guy is one of the "leaders" of our country.

Included in the bill are also earmarks and subsidies to bond traders, cotton farmers, yarn producers, sheep growers, Hawaiian sugar cane farms, renewable energy firms and the steel lobby. These are paid for with a new $40 billion tax on businesses and another $134 billion in debt. There is a new 24 cents per barrel tax on oil companies (which will flow right down to consumers), because Congress says their profits are excessive.

There's a tax on multinational company's overseas income. Anyone think that might drive them to abandon their US operations?

Small S-Corp businesses like mine will have our self-employment taxes go up from 35% to 50%. Aren't we the ones that create all the jobs? Private equity and venture capital firms that provide funding to start-ups would see a tax increase from 15% to 35%. How can they possibly think these things will create jobs?

But not to worry. PresBo is introducing a new line item veto proposal this week or next that will "rein in wasteful spending and hold Congress accountable."

If anyone needs any convincing that it is time for a voter revolution to VOTE THEM ALL OUT, this should do it.

Look at Greece. Their economy and government are in chaos. Three years ago, their debt was 90% of the gross domestic product. That is where we are TODAY! At the current rate of borrowing, the rest of the world will be watch us on the news as our economy, and our freedom, crumble at our feet.

Wake up, People. Our Country is being dismantled before our eyes. What will our children tell our grandchildren? That our generation had the chance to preserve the Union and couldn't get up off the couch to do it? This year may be our last chance to stop the slide.

A Real Measure of Environmental Damage

2010-05-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

As a 21-inch pipeline spews oil at the sea floor and crews work around the clock to find a way to stop it, we wonder what the long term impact will be of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

Most of the media is comparing this spill to the Exxon Valdez spill that happened in 1989. In that spill , the tanker had a finite amount of oil (10.8 million gallons) compared to a virtually unlimited supply as this well has. The Valdez spill happened in the cold waters off of Prince William Sound in Alaska, whereas this one is in the warm Gulf of Mexico waters.

There is another historic spill that many have never heard of. The Ixtoc spill in 1979. THe Ixtoc was an exploratory rig, like the Deepwater Horizon. It exploded, burned and sank in 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig was leased by the Mexican national oil company. It took nine months to drill a relief well and cap the spill. In that 9 months, over 140 million gallons of oil escaped into the Gulf, eventually hitting over 200 miles of the Texas coastline.

Six to seven years after the Ixtoc spill, researchers had trouble finding any evidence of it.

Why did nature overcome the impact of the Ixtoc spill so much faster than it did after the Valdez spill? Several reasons...

Warm water. The warm Gulf waters help the oil break up. The warm weather helps more of it evaporate.

Natural Oil Seeps. The Gulf of Mexico has natural oil seeps that release the equivalent of two supertankers of oil each year into the environment. This "small dose" acts like an immunization. The Gulf already has organisms that consume oil. This is a smorgasbord for them.

Media outlets need to dig a little deeper. Instead of telling us how bad it is or is going to get, a little research could have produced a story line showing that even as bad as it is, the Gulf has shown an ability to recover. That, apparently, does not garner ratings.

Other Things Buried in The Healthcare Bill

2010-05-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi said, "If you want to know what's in the Bill, then vote for it!" We'll, they did, and now, as we have had time to read the Bill in detail, we are finding some of the land mines that were placed in it, many with little or no debate or discussion.

Several wording changes regarding 1099 reporting were added to Section 6041 of the tax code in the 2000+ page healthcare bill. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. The added cost just to prepare the additional forms will be in the billions of dollars for businesses.

Under current tax law, businesses are required to issue 1099s when paying outside consultants, and other payments of more than $600 made to entities that are not corporations. The health care bill dramatically expands the list of situations in which a business must prepare and send 1099's, requiring that 1099s be sent for ANY expenditure over $600. The only explanation for this new law is that Congress feels it is missing out on some tax revenue, and this is their way of trying to capture more.

What this means for me as a business owner, is that now I'll have to issue 1099s whenever I do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. The US economy spends $14 trillion annually; that’s a lot of 1099s. When a business buys office supplies, pays for phone service, pays the electric bill, etc. and spends more than $600 annually, they will have to mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS.

Paying rent, paying utilities, paying your alarm service, paying for fuel. The IRS will receive a flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.

So not only will business have to spend more money preparing and mailing the forms, but the added cost of correcting mistakes and compliance will be huge.

In order to file all these 1099s, a business will need to collect the necessary information from all its service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold taxes on your payments.I think this is the trap that Congress intended. The cost for businesses to chase down this information is extreme on its own. Businesses may be more likely just to withhold taxes, giving the Government an interest free loan of hundreds of billions of dollars until tax time.

So, along with the individual mandates that will tax people if they don't have healthcare (a tax on people making less than $250k per year), the tax on companies that don't provide healthcare (a tax on people making less than $250K per year) and this new tax law, the burden on small businesses continues to grow as we learn more and more about what was buried in the enormous ploy to expand the size and involvement of government in our lives.

"If you want to know what's in the Bill, then vote for it!" takes on a whole new meaning as we really find out which screws have been put to the American people and American small businesses.

The Other 50 Percent

2010-04-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

It is April 15th. Tax Day. We are 105 days into the year, and just last week passed "Tax Freedom Day". Tax Freedom Day is the day on which we have worked enough to pay our "fair share" of federal income taxes. The Tax Foundation uses government data to calculate Tax Freedom Day each year, and this year, it was April 9th. American's (that pay taxes) worked 99 days in 2010 just to earn enough to pay their taxes in April of 2011.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/

It was reported last week that almost 50% of Americans no longer pay Federal income tax. So we are basically at a point at which one half of our society is carrying the other half on their backs.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=1001289

The PresBo was campaigning in 2008 on a pledge to cut taxes for "average Americans", the Tax Policy Center estimated that 38% of Americans paid no Federal income tax. After the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), that percentage grew to 47%.

One of Obama's main campaign promises was that no new taxes would be imposed on households making $250,000 or less. Let's see how he's done with that one.

Based on an evaluation by the Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee (the Committee that writes the tax law of the United States), Obama has signed into law over $670 Billion in tax increases on the middle class.

http://republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov/UploadedFiles/DemTaxIncreases1.pdf

No, this was not done in the obvious way of announcing an income tax rate increase. It was done in a sneaky, back-room, non-transparent way of burying them in a 2700 page healthcare bill that no one read before they voted for it. This $670 billion in new taxes include:

- A new 2.3% excise tax on certain medical devices
- A tobacco tax increase
- Federal Unemployment surtaxes extended
- New annual tax on health insurance
- New 40% excise tax on certain high‐cost health plans
- New tax on individuals who do not purchase government‐approved
health insurance *

Just to name a few.

But I digress...back to income taxes. I want to break this down yet a little further. OK. It has been established that about 50% of Americans pay 100% of the income tax collected. Let's look at that 50% now. Please keep in mind the data lags a few years behind.

The top 10% of taxpayers pay 71% of all tax collected. This equates to a household income level of $113,000 per year. This may sound like a lot of money, but lets assume we have a married couple, he makes $60,000 a year as an electrician, and she makes $60,000 a year as a teacher. They are in the top 10% of earners that pay 70% of all taxes.

So while the Democrats would like Americans to think that it is the rich folks that are getting all the tax breaks, it is the "rich folk" that meet the example above that are actually carrying the "other 50%" on their backs.

Now, if we want to have the "fair" discussion, what part of fair requires 10% of the earners to pay 70% of the taxes?

Our Founding Fathers many times proclaimed that once a majority of the People realizes they could vote themselves money from the treasury, the end of the Republic would be near. I fear we are approaching that point.

Teachers, Unemployment and Toxic Mortgages

2010-03-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

I don't know how much longer our country will be able to stand the abuse being heaped upon it. No, I'm not talking about pollution or global warming. I'm talking about how much longer our Republic will be able to withstand the constant assault on its very existence.

I heard a woman on a radio show last week saying that her child came home from 3rd grade and learned that we live in a democracy. His mother corrected him and said that we live in a Republic. There is a big difference. If you are unsure what it is, watch the following short movie. Pay close attention to the part about the fall of the Roman Empire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htTnD_Zl0bs

Thomas Jefferson said "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." This is specifically why our Founding Fathers went with a Republic instead.

So, if our public school teachers are teaching US history incorrectly, the question becomes "Is it because they really don't know better?" If that is the case, what a sorry state of affairs for today's school children.

On to Unemployment....

I ran across this graphic today. It is a depiction of the increase in unemployment for the US, by county, from January 2007 until January 2010. It is a little alarming, to say the least.

http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

So what is Congress doing about it? Well, they are debating whether to extend unemployment benefits an additional 4 weeks for unemployed persons....from 99 weeks to 103 weeks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/will-congress-extend-unem_n_516905.html

So, based on the current formula, if you lose a job, you can sit on your ass for 2 years and collect a check partially funded by ME! Sen. Coburn (R) of Oklahoma is blocking it. Good for him. Now, I don't have a problem giving people who lose their jobs a little help. But 2 years? Never in my life has it taken more than 2 months (usually less than 2 weeks) to find a job. I say, if you want a check after 2 months, you need to provide "in-kind" services; picking up trash along the highway, working in a homeless shelter, etc.

Toxic Mortgages. Need I say more? These are what supposedly got the US into our current recession, and not a single thing has been done to fix the problem. Yes, the Federal Government gave the banks bail-out money.They were supposed to use the money to collateralize these underwater assets. Instead, they sat on it, loaned it back to the government at a higher interest rate, used it to buy failing banks, etc.

So here we are, more than a year later. The banks are paying back the loans from the US Government (don't get me started on what are government is doing with that money...fodder for another blog). All those "toxic" mortgages are still on their books. And what is Washington planning to do? Lend them more money or buy the toxic assets from them:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/24/investors-invited-to-buy-toxic-mortgages/

Yes, some mortgages have been "streamlined". That's the term used when the borrower is underwater on their loan, and the bank either writes off principal and lowers the loan amount, taking a loss, or renegotiates the interest rate to lower the borrowers payment. Government estimates are that less than 1 million loans have been "streamlined."

I actually called Countrywide, now Bank of America, and asked for them to lower my rate. I was told that the only way I would qualify is if I stopped paying my mortgage for 2 months. I said, "So let me get this straight...unless I go 2 months delinquent on my mortgage, I don't qualify for any assistance?" "Yessir." "Well, what would it take for me to re-finance at a lower rate?" After a few minutes of calcualtions, he comes back and says "We can do that, we can lower your rate a full 1.5 points. All you'll need to do is pay $11,000 in fees and other costs."

So I had a choice. Come out of pocket $11,000 to lower my rate by 1.5 points; or just simply stop paying my mortgage for two months and get it for free. While it sounded tempting. I told the young man I'd stick with what I had. I have a little too much integrity and pride to go with door number two.

And we wonder what is wrong with our country. When did we become a country that rewards slackers and punishes producers?

I hope that the silent majority that feels like I do makes a valiant attempt to take our country back in November. Otherwise I may start looking for another country to call home.

What doesn't kill "US" makes us stronger - hopefully

2010-03-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

"Mr. Franklin, what have you given us?" "A Republic, madam, if you can keep it." Sorry, Ben. We tried.

If you follow my blog, you know I dropped everything and road-tripped to Washington DC to participate in the anti-ObamaCare rally on Saturday. Not that I thought standing in front of the Capitol building and chanting "Kill the Bill" would sway any on-the-fence congressman or congresswoman to change vote against the largest single welfare bill in this country's history, but more to feel like I at least voiced my opinion to those with the power to change the outcome, let them know that I will vote on November 2nd, and provide somewhat of a civics lesson to my 17 year old daughter who accompanied me.

All the way home, we stayed glued to Fox News on satellite radio listening to the reports of who was swaying which way, who was holding out for a special deal in return for their vote and what challenges were already being mounted to try to stop the reconciliation bill from passing the Senate. It was apparent very early in the day that things were not going to go our way.

Once again, we all will be witness to the greatness and forward thinking of the founders of the Constitution. By the separation of powers provided in the Constitution, we may still have a chance at defeating this welfare monstrosity. 33 states have pending legislation that would prohibit the state and its citizens from being bound by the provisions of the healthcare bill. 5 other states are already preparing lawsuits to be filed in federal court to overturn the bill on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.

The judges in the Supreme Court who will hear these cases are the same ones who were made to sit through heckling while Obama took a cheap shot at the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case in his State of the Union address. Democrats in the chamber whooped and jeered at the Court like obnoxious schoolboys. It is my hope that payback will be hell.

The media did the protest rally no favors. There were no news vans there. Several reports were that there were "a few thousand" protesters. I was there. The number was more like 40,000 to 45,000.

The party in power also did what they could to discourage the event. They turned off all of the water fountains around the Capitol building. There were no trash cans and no portolets. Mind you, half a mile away at the immigration rally, attended by democrat-friendlies, there were over 300 portolets, water fountains, and trash cans every 50 feet.

No matter. All the "Tea Party Patriots" carried all their trash out with them and made their way a half mile to the port-potty city.

Most everyone there knew the outcome before they left the comfort of their homes and headed to DC. We weren't there to change the outcome. We were there to embolden those courageous enough to vote against the bill, and to let them know we will stand behind them through the continuing fight to get it overturned, through legislative action or court action. We will get there. November 2nd is not that far away.

The challenge between now and then is to make sure each district that is up for grabs has a viable conservative candidate and that we don't split the vote and let the Dems stay in power there. I will do my part. I hope everyone else will, too.

Until then, we need to read the bill, dissect it and make sure everyone knows what is in it and who got the sweetheart deals in exchange for their votes. We need to let this be the battle cry for November.

The Anti-Obamacare Rally - Saturday, March 20th

2010-03-20T05:36:00.000-07:00

When I came back to the office from lunch yesterday, little did I know that I'd shortly be undertaking a 10 hour drive and would wake up on an air mattress on the floor of my cousin's apartment in Washington, DC, getting ready to go to a anti-Obamacare rally and to walk the halls of Congress to press those present to vote "NO" for the overtaking by the government of the US healthcare system and of 1/6the of the US economy.

My daughter and one of her friends came home from a half-day at school yesterday and said they should go to the rally today in DC. After a flurry of phone calls and text messages, we found ourselves in the car on our way. The plan is to hop on the Metro, get off at the Washington Mall, and participate in a anti-government healthcare rally on the west lawn of the Capitol building. After the rally, there are plans to go into the building and speak directly to Representatives and/or their staff, and ask them to vote "NO" on Sunday's "ram-through" of Obama's healthcare plan.

There are several issues with this thing....starting with the way Congress intends to pass it. Instead of a straight "up-down" vote, according to the Constitution, Speaker Pelosi intends to bury the healthcare bill inside a reconciliation bill, and "Deem" it passed when the other bill passes. The purpose behind this is so that when Representatives go home later this month, they can tell their consituents "I did not vote for the healthcare bill".

Talk about cowardice!

Next? The fact that the Constitution of the United States does not grant the power to the Federal government to regulate health care. The Tenth Amendment specifically states that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the People."

So where does it say they have been delegated this power?

Funding? Let me put it this way: If you had $100 to feed 100 people each day, and the government came along and said you need to feed 10 more people, but you can't have any more money, what do you think would happen? You'd either have to give everyone less food (rationing), or the quality of your food would go down. So why do the Democrats think that the goernment can provide BETTER care for MORE people, and have it cost less?

This is what we get with life-long politicians. We need term limits. BAD!

More to come. I'll be tweeting and posting on facebook throughout the day to keep you posted on our progress.

You can follow my tweets at DWheels22@twitter.com.

More to come. Stay tuned throughout the day.

Do We Really Want Democracy?

2010-03-09T04:21:00.000-08:00

Something has been nagging me for some time, and with elections happening in Iraq right now, it has bubbled back up to the surface. Sitting at my desk in our wonderfully democratic and capitalistic country, I have been constantly baffled at why, when we Americans have an election, be it for a local office or a national presidential election, our voter turnout is so low.

I don't mean marginally low. I mean pathetically low.

One would think the United States, as the single strongest flame for democracy and freedom in the world, would consistently and historically have the strongest voter turnout numbers at election time. But our voter turnout percentage is continually eclipsed by other countries, most of the time fledgling democracies.

As an example, as partly as a jab at those who said it would never be possible, I'll use Iraq's current elections. Here are a People that are traveling to the polls, some from many miles away, on foot, under threat of life, to cast their vote and dip their finger in purple ink. Many of them show off their purple finger as a badge of pride and courage, knowing well it may expose them to bodily harm or death. Some of us decide not to vote because the line is too long or it's raining out.

On Sunday, 61% of eligible voters came out in Anbar Province, a former extremist stronghold that includes the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi. In the last national elections five years ago, 3,375 people—or 2%—voted in Anbar. The other Sunni-dominated provinces that boycotted in 2005 saw similar numbers: over 70% turnout in Diyala and Salaheddin and 67% in Nineveh, all higher than the national average of 62%. American Presidential elections rarely have such turnout.

In 2002, a presidential election was held in Iraq. Saddam Hussein won it by a margin of 11,445,638 to zero. A CBS News reporter proclaimed, "Whether that's because they love their leader—as many people said they do—or for other reasons, was hard to tell." And we wonder why CBS News has fallen so far in the ratings....

I will have to concede that voter turnout in the US has been steadily increasing for the last several election cycles. I think it has less to do with us all feeling stronger about our patriotic duty, unfortunately, than is does that the country is becoming more and more politically divided.

In the early to mid-1980's, voter turnout in state-level elections averaged in the high 30 percent to low 40 percent. The overall turnout in national elections that year was 41%. Off-year (non-presidential) national elections recorded turnout in the high 30 percent range. Presidential election years get voters a little more motivated, usually garnering turnout in the mid to high 50% range. In the 2008 presidential election, the overall U.S. voter turnout was 61%.

http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

That means that 39% of eligible voters, or 81 million voters, had something better to do than to get off their butts and go exercise their right to vote. Why is this? How can third world countries continue to have remarkable voter turnout? I believe the answer is that unlike most of us in the West, they have known tyranny in their lifetime, and we have not. We have come to take freedom for granted, while they have , until recently, only known a thirst for freedom.

Now that Iraq has tasted freedom, hopefully they will not take it for granted as many in the US have done.

Why Nuclear Power?

2010-02-27T05:56:00.000-08:00

The following is an OpEd from today's Wall Street Journal. It dispels many of the myths about the efficacy and safety of nuclear power.

By WILLIAM TUCKER

President Obama's announcement last week that the federal government will support new nuclear reactors through loan guarantees has reinvigorated the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, Ralph Nader's Public Citizen and other opponents of nuclear energy. Their objections to this proven technology—which already generates about 20% of our electricity—have barely changed since the 1970s. But most of their arguments have either been proven wrong or become outdated. Here's a rundown:

• Nuclear isn't safe. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident—in which a faulty cooling valve led to a meltdown without injuring anyone—occurred when computer technology had barely penetrated the U.S. industry. In the 1970s, each reactor was an island unto itself. Industry officials barely communicated. The valve that failed at Three Mile Island had failed nine times previously, yet nobody said a thing about it.

Today, thanks to the Price-Anderson Act, first adopted in 1957 and amended several times since, each of America's 104 reactors is now on the hook for $100 million in damages for an accident at another reactor ($10 billion coverage in all). You can bet they talk to each other. Accidental "scrams" and safety outages have been reduced to nearly zero. Our entire fleet is up and running 90% of the time. That's why, even though nuclear constitutes only 11% of generating capacity, it provides 20% of electricity.

• Nuclear is too expensive. Building a 1,500-megawatt reactor will cost around $5 billion, which seems expensive until you compare it to everything else. The equivalent capacity in wind power would easily cost $4 billion because you have to build 4,000 windmills at $1 million apiece plus hundreds of miles of transmission lines and an almost equal capacity of natural gas generators to back them up when the wind doesn't blow.

Building zero-emissions coal plants that capture the carbon dioxide and bury it underground will probably cost more, but nobody really knows because it's never been done. Only natural gas is cheaper to build, but that's because 95% of the cost is in the fuel. (With nuclear it's only 26%.) Natural gas prices fluctuate. Would anyone care to predict what the price of natural gas will be in 25 years?

• A hijacked jet liner crashing into a reactor would cause a nuclear holocaust. Go to YouTube and search "plane crashing into wall." You'll see a video of an F-4 fighter jet hitting a concrete containment wall at 500 miles per hour. The plane simply disappears. The wall barely budges. Nuclear opponents argue that a jumbo jet would have a greater impact, but the laws of physics say it would be about the same. A jet is a hollow metal tube. Even at the speed of a bullet (700 mph) it could not penetrate a concrete containment wall.

• We haven't figured out what to do with the waste. Basically, there is no such thing as nuclear waste. The reason we have the controversy over the Yucca Mountain storage facility is because we gave up fuel reprocessing in the 1970s. Reprocessing reduces the volume of spent fuel—already remarkably small—by 97%. The French reprocess and store all their high-level waste from 30 years of producing 70% of their electricity beneath the floor of one room in their La Hague plant.

• We can't reprocess because that will lead to nuclear proliferation. The conceit of the 1970s was that if we isolated plutonium in an American reprocessing plant, some foreign terrorist would steal it to make a bomb. Half a dozen countries have since built nuclear bombs, none of them with stolen American plutonium. North Korea built its own reactor. Iran has been enriching uranium. France, Japan and Russia all reprocess and no one has stolen their plutonium. Reprocessing American fuel has nothing to do with nuclear proliferation.

• The nuclear revival is being forced on America by the powerful nuclear industry. There is no American "nuclear industry." Westinghouse is now owned by Toshiba. Areva is French. GE partners with Hitachi but is running in last place. Only three of the 33 proposed American reactors are GE designs. The biggest new international competitor is South Korea, which just won a $20 billion contract to build four reactors in the United Arab Emirates. China is building four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, even though its design has not yet been approved by our Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When the first new reactors are built here, 70% of the parts will come from abroad.

We've essentially fallen 10 years behind the rest of the world in nuclear technology, but the Obama administration's decision to support nuclear will finally get the ball rolling. Within a decade we may very well catch up with the rest of the world in developing the energy technology of the 21st century.

Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey," published in October by Bartleby Press.

My Government Rant of the Day

2010-02-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

The following is in part from Neal Boortz' February Boortz Blast.

http://boortz.com/

Most people, whether they were impacted or not, were outraged at the Bernie Madoff scandal. This guy took billions of dollars from investors and squandered it for personal gain. Many of us have said that this type of greed is what is wrong with America today. Madoff talked people into investing with him. Trouble was, he didn't invest their money. As time went by, he simply took the money from the new investors to pay off the old investors. Finally there were too many old investors and not enough money from new investors coming in to keep the payments going. Next thing you know Madoff is one of the most hated men in America and he is off to jail.

What Madoff did to his investors is what the US government has been doing to us for over 60 years with Social Security. There is no meaningful difference between the two schemes ... except that one was operated by a private individual who is now in jail, and the other is operated by politicians who enjoy perks, privileges and status in spite of their actions.

Here is a side-by-side comparison done by Neal Boortz, one of my hometown talk show hosts:

Madoff took money from investors with the promise that the money will be invested and made available to them later.

The Government takes money from wage earners with the promise that the money will be invested in a "Trust Fund" and made available later.

Instead of investing the money, Madoff spends it on nice homes in the Hamptons and yachts.

Instead of depositing money in a Trust Fund the politicians use it for general spending and vote buying.

When the time comes to pay the investors back, Madoff simply uses some of the new funds from newer investors to pay back the older investors.

When benefits for older investors become due the politicians pay them with money taken from younger and newer wage earners to pay the older investors.

Now, here’s where it gets a little different….

When Madoff's scheme is discovered all hell breaks loose. New investors won't give him any more cash. He’s convicted of fraud.

When Social Security runs out of money they simply force the taxpayers to send them some more.

Bernie Madoff is in jail.

Politicians remain in Washington.

We've been told that it would be 2016 or 2017 before Social Security started paying out more money than it was taking in. Well ... we're here. In 2009 the economy forced many more people than expected into retirement. These people filed for their Social Security benefits. Last year Social Security almost ran out of money. The benefits paid almost exceeded the taxes collected. There is, of course, no "trust fund" to go to. That money has been spent. For Madoff that was a crime. For our politicians, it wasn't. Now the chief actuary of the Social Security system says that we're going to "go negative" for the next year or two.

Now the politicians will naturally be looking for a solution. They cause the problem because they just couldn't stand seeing all of that money sitting in the trust fund. They just had to get their hands on it ... and leave behind some IOUs. Now the IOUs are due, and there's no money to pay them off.

The solution? Well, they'll probably have to raise the retirement age. Then they may well introduce means testing. They'll tell retiring seniors who have done well with their own retirement plans that they may well lose their Social Security benefits. Can they do that? Oh hell yes they can. There is no federal law which guarantees Social Security benefits to anyone who has been forced to pay the taxes.

You can bet your ass the Government won’t be reduced spending. They'll try to raise the Social Security taxes, raise the income limits, etc. As Mr. Boortz says…”BOHICA” (bend over, here it comes again).

Global Warming??

2010-02-11T07:12:00.001-08:00

As I sit in a hotel room in Casper, Wyoming, getting ready to head out to look at several cleanup sites and freeze my butt off, I'm multi-tasking...listening to the news, reading articles on the internet. Lots of news about the weather.

"Global warming results in no snow in Vancouver for the Olympics"

"Record snowfall in Washington DC"

and on, and on.

As I sat reading, my morning "Morning Bell" came across email from the Heritage Foundation. The article had a link to a list compiled and being maintained by a Britton on all the things they hear of that are caused by global warming...er, I mean Climate Change.

Some of these include:Atlantic Ocean less salty; Atlantic Ocean more salty; earth spinning slower; earth spinning faster; bigger fish; fish shrinking. See the entire list at:

http://bit.ly/9tU0W2

So, the question must be asked of the enviro-left: Is there anything that Climate change does not affect? It clearly hasn't affected my weight. Mo matter if it is warm or cold, I can not lose that 15 pounds I've been trying to for 5 years. Gas prices? High in the summer, lower in the winter. I think the only thing that seems to have any predictable effect on fuel prices is the federal holiday schedule.

Yet, the enviroleft insists that a 0.006 C change in mean global temperature per year is responsible for all of these things. We used to just call it weather. Just about everywhere I've ever lived, the saying was "If you don't like the weather, stick around for a few minutes, it'll change."

In the meantime, we'll have to deal with reduced/increased avalanches, longer/shorter bird migrations, and ice sheets shrinking/ice sheets growing.

The State of the Union in 50 Words or Less

2010-01-29T05:18:00.001-08:00

This week's State of the Union address by Presbo was nothing like the rallying cry of presidents past. It was more like the lecture given by a school teacher to an unruly classroom.

Rather than building his speech around the quickly dwindling public opinion of him, his Congress and his failing initiatives and letting the public know that he hears them, he used it as an opportunity to scold them, admonish the Supreme Court for following the Constitution, and pretty much said, "Hold on to your britches, People, 'cause here comes more of the same", or as a local radio talk host here in Atlanta says "BOHICA!" (Bend over, here it comes again!).

In Layman's terms, the speech went something like this:

"Things sucked when I got here.
You're lucky to have me, even if you're too stupid to know that.
I understand you don't like what I proposed last year, but I don't care.
I'm awesome, and you're not, so deal with it."

What bothers me most is his ambush of the Supreme Court justices. The text of his speech was released 30 minutes before he started, and the Justices were already seated, so they had no idea what was coming.

PresBo's comment of a "century of campaign finance laws being overturned" is what Justice Alito was verbalizing (as seen on many news clips) as "That's not true." Here is a little background on the Citizens United v. Hillary ruling by the Court:

Citizens United v. Hillary was a suit filed as a result of an unflattering documentary made about Hillary Clinton, and aired within 30 days of the primaries. "Hillary" contended that this violated Federal Election Commission law that prohibits corporations from donating to political campaigns. The Court ruled that this was not a contribution to a campaign, but was free speech, and banning it was in violation of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

Chris Good of "The Atlantic" summarized it like this:

[The opinion] basically eliminates a middleman: before today, corporations and unions had to set up PACs (political action committees), filed separately with the IRS, that would receive donations. And they did. Corporations and unions spend millions of dollars on elections. Now, however, the accounting firewall is gone, and Wal-Mart or the Service Employees International Union, for instance, can spend their corporate money directly on candidates."

The ruling the Court overturned was Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 ruling that corporations can't fund political ads. The "100 year old" legislation that PresBo says was overturned was the Tillman Act decision, enacted in 1907, that imposed a federal ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates. Citizens United v. Hillary did not change this finding.

http://bit.ly/5RLzM

Once again, this president is relying on the ignorance of the masses to be able to lie directly to their faces. He continues to believe that the more times you say something, whether it is true or not, the more people will believe it.

I personally believe the US public is smarter than that.

Chalk one up for We the People

2010-01-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

In what is being called a landslide victory, Republican Scott Brown has defeated Democrat Martha Coakley for the US Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy. This is the first time in almost 50 years that the State of Massachusetts has elected a Republican to the US Senate.

Not only will Brown become the 41st Republican, eliminating the Dems fillibuster-proof majority, but it may also spell the end to many of the progressive left's policy goals they thought they could cram through with the super-majority of 60 senators. How many Democratic senators will now realize how vulnerable they are if they do not listen to their constituents?

During one of the newscasts, Frank Lundz, a pollster, held a focus group of Massachusetts voters. When asked how many voted for Obama in 2008, almost all 30 or so people in the room raised their hand. When asked how many voted for Coakley, the Democrat, only four or five did. The reason? They said they were sending a message to Washington that they do not want legislation shoved down their throats against the will of the people. This sentiment is sending chills up and down the spines of Democrats nationwide.

The next question is will the Senate confirm and seat Mr. Brown before they vote on Health Care? Senate rules require both the Vice President and the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, to be present. Should PresBo decide to send Biden to oversee aid in Haiti, then Brown can not be confirmed and seated. It is reported that Reid says Brown will be seated "once the appropriate paperwork is filed." What will the American People do if the Dems have the cajones to pull such a trick in order to get the Health Care bill passed? Be prepared for an all-out voter revolution the like of which may have never been seen. This election may very well be a turning point in politics as we know it.

This is an interesting time in American politics. Stay involved. Stay vocal. Enjoy the ride!

The Expectations of a Microwave Society

2010-01-18T10:53:00.001-08:00

I heard several news outlets and many more people on Facebook comment on why it is taking so long for the relief efforts to reach those in need in Haiti. While everyone wishes that food, water and rescues would get to those in need much quicker than they have, we need to better understand the situation and the conditions the relief workers and rescuers are facing in order to cast judgment. Hopefully, I can shed some light on the challenges personnel on the ground are likely facing.

As en environmental contractor, I have been a first responder to several types of natural disasters, mainly hurricanes and floods. As a person who is impacted by the disaster, we only see the damage and delay that affect our little corner of the world, but a microcosm of the full extent of the damage. But as a responder, working across a disaster zone, I have been exposed to the breadth of destruction that remains after such an event. I'll qualify this by saying I have never worked as a first responder in an earthquake. However, many of the same challenges exist.

Getting food, water, fuel, construction equipment, medical supplies and response personnel to a natural disaster zone can be a time consuming matter, compounded by Haiti being on an island. The airport infrastructure was damaged, including no electricity to run communications, provide landing lights, etc. Their air traffic control system was gone. Yes, planes landed early, but having had to circle for hours in order to be cleared to land, they burned up all their fuel. Once on the ground, there was no electricity to pump fuel, so there the planes sat, with no way to take off again, blocking access to more planes carrying supplies. It wasn't until the US Navy arrived that they could start shuttling tankers of aviation fuel to the planes, allowing them to clear out so the next wave could get in.

We take for granted the convenience of plugging in a saw, flipping a light switch, or fueling up a chainsaw to clear debris. But when the power is out, gas stations can not pump gas.

Roads throughout Port au Prince are blocked with debris. Heavy equipment is needed to clear the debris to allow access for emergency vehicles. One of the first things that happens after a hurricane is a road clearing crew comes through and pushes everything off the roads to give access to response vehicles. Again, with no power to run fuel pumps, once this equipment runs out of fuel, it sits until the power comes back on and it can be re-fueled. Without roads being cleared, aid can not be distributed where it is needed.

Most if not all of the infrastructure in the city was likely destroyed or damaged. Water, sewer, power, phone. No way to get word out that you need help, other than to travel to where help is and request it face-to-face. Oh yeah, no gas in the car and the roads are blocked.

As fuel starts to flow, portable generators can come on line to provide spotty power. However, as anyone who's been through a hurricane knows, that can sometime take days, and not everyone has a generator. Most remain in the dark without power until the power company can get in, replace downed poles and transformers and string new lines, again, days at best, more likely a week or more.

Once partial electricity is restored and fuel is flowing, then you have to figure out how to get the massive amounts of supplies to where they are needed the most. With most large trucks likely damaged by the quake, aid has to be moved in smaller vehicles. Not until the military starts unloading large vehicle from landing craft or cargo aircraft can large amounts of supplies be moved into the city.

After hurricane Charlie hit south Florida in 2004, the areas that took a direct hit were without power for several weeks. It took three or four days just to get the roads cleared of debris. And that is on the mainland US, where help can drive in from un-impacted areas. Again, Haiti being an island adds complication to everything.

We would all obviously like to see efforts reaching those in need as quickly as possible. Our expectation of "quickly as possible" is jaded due to how easily we can obtain daily necessities in our everyday life. Trust me. The military and relief organizations on the ground are working as quickly as they can through very difficult conditions. They deserve our praise and prayers, not our criticism.

A Cult of Personilty

2010-01-17T06:46:00.000-08:00

With the news from Haiti growing ever more dim as the body count rises from the 7.0 magnitude earthquake earlier this week, I decided to do a little research into the country, its population and history. Little did I know that it would lead me to my next blog post.

Haiti has been ruled by various countries and dictators for hundreds of years, with the populace only adopting a constitution and living under a democratic form of government since 1987. One of the longest ruling dictators was the Duvalier family, who ruled the country from 1957 until 1986, when a former priest, John-Bertrand Aristide was elected president.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti

The Duvalier family and Aristide had something in common; they reigned as a personality cult with much corruption. According to Wikipedia, “a cult of personality arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships and Stalinist governments. A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship, except that it is created specifically for political leaders.”

From Wikipedia:
“Historically, through the principle of the divine right of kings, rulers were said to hold office by the will of God. The spread of democratic ideas in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries made it increasingly difficult for monarchs to preserve this aura. However, the subsequent development of photography, sound recording, film and mass production, as well as public education and techniques used in commercial advertising, enabled political leaders to project a positive image like never before. It was from these circumstances in the 20th century that the best-known personality cults arose.”

Reading on, Wikipedia says:
“Generally, personality cults are most common in regimes with totalitarian systems of government, that seek to radically alter or transform society according to (supposedly) revolutionary new ideas. Often, a single leader becomes associated with this revolutionary transformation, and comes to be treated as a benevolent "guide" for the nation, without whom the transformation to a better future cannot occur. This has been generally the justification for personality cults that arose in totalitarian societies of the 20th century.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_cult

Is any of this starting to sound familiar. Here we are in 2010 in America, and what is going on politically is almost the exact definition of a Cult of Personality as seen in totalitarian governments around the world for hundreds of years.

Let's look at the defining characteristics:

A cult of personality is similar to hero worship, except that it is created specifically for political leaders. Check.

A country's leader uses mass media to create an idealized, heroic public image. Check.

Personality Cults are most common in regimes that seek to radically alter or transform society. Check.

A single leader becomes associated with this revolutionary transformation. Check.

Public education is used as a means by political leaders to project a positive image. Check.

I think it is time for America to wake up and see what is going on for what it really is. The Democrats are creating a personality cult around President Obama, and the media is complicit in the game plan.

It is my hope that the citizens of this great country are waking up and realizing that elections have consequences; that never again will America sit idly by and let the democratic rights that so many have given their lives to protect, preserve and defend be squandered.

We are at a crossroads, People. We can either sit and watch our Country be transformed around us into something that for over 240 years we have fought to avoid, or we can each believe that our vote counts, that we CAN make a difference, and get involved to make sure the blood, sweat and tears of 240 years of brave patriots was not in vain. I know which path I will choose.

Clunker Math - Saving the Country one Car at a Time

2010-01-12T06:18:00.000-08:00

Either Congress and the Obama administration are really dumb, or there is a method to their madness. I'll let you decide. Let's look at the math behind the Cash for Clunkers program. I believe this is indicative of how our government views a "successful" program. I've rounded off to keep the math as simple as possible.

A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.

A fuel-efficient vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year.

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

The Obama administration claim 700,000 “clunker” vehicles were taken off the road by the Cash for Clunkers program, so that's 224 million gallons of gas saved per year.

A “barrel” of oil is about 44 US gallons. That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.

More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars.

So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million. We spent $8.57 for every dollar saved.

I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with health care, though.

What's Good for the Goose?

2010-01-02T09:07:00.001-08:00

In another instance of self-indulgent irony, the federal government seems to be the only sector of the American economy that is growing - by leaps and bounds. USA Today (not known as one of the most conservative periodicals) reported in mid-December that federal hiring has surged, with almost 200,000 new federal jobs created in the last 18 months, at the same time that the private sector has lost 7.3 million jobs.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-12-10-federal-pay-salaries_N.htm

Adding insult to injury, not only has the federal payroll grown by almost 10% in the last year and a half of the recession, but 6-figure salaries have skyrocketed. Apparently, the federal government has no intention of letting a little thing like a recession get in the way of its growth and pay increases.

As a small business owner, I instituted salary freezes a year ago. Instead of laying off employees, I've cut back hours. I actually cut my own salary by over 20%. What's the Federal government doing? Hiring like crazy and paying its employees huge salaries.

According to the USA Today article, 46% of federal employees earn a salary of OVER $150,000! Talk about a top-heavy organization. If you look at any private sector company, the employee to salary graphic is that of a pyramid, with a very few employees making the larger salaries (the point at the top), and a very wide, supporting base of many employees making the lower salaries. Not our government. Any wonder that nothing gets done and huge amounts of money get spent.

We as the citizens that pay the taxes that pay those salaries should be outraged! When the recession started, the US Department of Transportation had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

The salary growth has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector, despite claims by Jessica Klement, government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association, that federal employees make 26% less than private workers for comparable jobs.

Do we need any reason other than this to start a grass roots movement for voter-imposed terms limits? We need to all pledge that every election, starting in the congressional elections coming up in November 2010, that every last incumbent will be voted out of office. It is our current leadership that has allowed annual pay increases for government employees, while the rest of us are enduring salary freezes, pay cuts, or in some cases, losing jobs.

It is up to us to take back control of OUR government. The Founding Fathers never meant for the government to become the huge behemoth it has become. More and more we see Congress trying to write themselves additional powers that were not given them in the Constitution, with all of us paying the bill. As the C.O. in Top Gun told Pete Maverick, "Son, your ego is writing checks your body can't cash!".

Thomas Jefferson said "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by It to the States, are reserved to the States or to the People." These words were in fact added to the Constitution with the 10th Amendment.

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am10

It is time for each of us to read this founding document, and hold our leaders to its defined limits.

The Land of the Czars

2009-12-29T08:29:00.000-08:00

I read an article the other day about several of the czars that PresBo has appointed in his first year. Aside from the sheer number of them, and the fact that few of them have to go through any vetting, congressional approval or any other form of up or down vote in order to become employees of the Executive branch of government, unlike cabinet secretaries, they are a very left-wing bunch of folks.

Obama has appointed 38 "czars" so far in his first year as President, only 8 of which have undergone Senate confirmation. In contrast, George W. Bush appointed 36 czars, of which 21 were vetted, interviewed and confirmed by the US Senate. Interestingly, in March of 2008, then Senator Obama said of all of Bush's czars, "The biggest problems we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more power into the Executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm the President of the United States."

http://bit.ly/17dgCQ

So what do czars do? They are basically policy advisers to the President. He charges them with spearheading legislation in various areas to meet his policy agendas. It's the President's way of saying "This is so crucial an issue that I am assigning one of my best people to it, and he'll report directly to me." What this really means is that the executive branch is doing an end-run around the constitutional role of the Senate and Congress.

Let's take a look at some of Presbo's czars, and where they have come from:

Manufacturing Czar - Ron Bloom. Formerly an official with the United Steelworkers Union. Part of the White House team that restructured General Motors. Hmmm, you don't think the unions had any influence there, do you?

Auto Recovery Czar - Ed Montgomery. Former Dean of University of Maryland and former deputy secretary of labor under Clinton.

Border Czar - Alan Bersain. Former chairman of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. This qualifies him how?

Regulatory Czar - Cass Sunstein. Former professor of 27 years at University of Chicago. He is anti-gun, anti-hunting, and believes animals should have rights, too!

FCC Diversity Czar - Mark Lloyd. Lloyd called Hugo Chavez' takeover of Venezuela "an incredible revolution, a Democratic revolution." His previous writings suggest he supports a "fairness doctrine", which would kill conservative talk radio, one of the few remaining sources of conservative political commentary. Lloyd was quoted as saying "the only mechanism that can help us improve society is government".

Global Warming Czar - Carol Browner. Former head of the EPA under Clinton, Browner was key in getting EPA to declare C02 a health hazard, paving the way for strict regulations on C02 emissions. Who needs a Cap & Trade bill when the EPA can impose regulations without having to go through Congress? Browner was listed by The Socialist International as a leader of their Commission for a Sustainable World Society.

Science and Technology Czar - John Holdren. Holdren is a staunch global-warming champion, and defended the constitutionality of government mandated abortion and sterilization to control population. In 1986, he declared that "global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion people by 2020".

Safe School Czar - Kevin Jennings. Jennings founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and wrote the forward to "The Queering of Education", a book that advocates teaching homosexual tolerance to elementary aged school children. He has been quotes as saying he admires the founder of NAMBLA. NAMBLA's goal (from their website homepage) is "to end the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships".

Van Jones, Green Jobs Czar (resigned): Mr. Jones was signatory to a petition that claimed George Bush and Dick Cheney were behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

And the list goes on....

Infotech/Information Czar
Weapons Czar
Government Performance Czar
Car Czar
Faith-Based Czar
Urban Czar
Domestic Violence Czar
Nonroliferation/WMD Czar
Copyright Czar
Counter-Terrorism Czar
AIDS Czar
California Water Czar
Health Reform Czar
Technology Czar
Drug Czar
Stimulus Accountability Czar
Afgan/Pakistan Czar
Eurasian Energy Czar
International Climate Czar
Iran Czar
Mideast Peace Czar
Sudan Czar
Pay Czar
Intelligence Czar
Economic Recovery Czar
Great Lakes Czar
TARP Czar
Guantanamo Closure Czar

What this really is doing is subverting the role of Congress in vetting and confirming cabinet secretary positions. Once upon a time, it was the cabinet posts that were the president's "most trusted" advisers. That time is gone. Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia (R) has collected 115 co-sponsors for his Czar Accountability Act, that would require congressional confirmation of all czars. This bill would bring back the constitutional checks and balances that have been avoided by appointing czars without confirmation.

If you don't want to see yet more of our Constitution subverted, please call your Representative and ask for their support of Rep. Kingston's bill.

Smoke & Mirrors

2009-12-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

The Amazing Barack, magician extraordinaire, is at it again. During the election, he preached that he was all about helping small businesses, as he recognized they were the life-blood of economic growth. How was he going to do this? By giving them a reprieve from paying capital gains tax. Well, that promise never materialized. But even had it panned out, it would have just been another way to pull the wool over uninformed voter's eyes.

Just this week, during a press conference announcing that the stimulus was so successful that he wants to take unused TARP money and have a new stimulus, PresBo announced once again his desire to waive capital gains taxes on small businesses for a year, and enable them to take the "windfall" profits and reinvest them into their businesses and hire people.

Well, either he realizes most Americans are ignorant or have completely tuned politics out, or he's convinced himself that there really is a benefit to his idea.

As a small business owner, let me explain the whole "capital gains" tax issue. Capital gains are profits earned by selling an asset for more than you purchased it for. This asset is usually stocks, precious metals, real estate, etc. This does not include inventory, services rendered (i.e.: things your business does to earn money).

Most (95%) of all small business owners (including me) are Subchapter "S" corporations. What that means is that all profits from your business flow down to your personal income tax return and are paid at the personal level as income tax. S-Corps do not pay federal income tax. Small businesses usually don't sell assets for profit. How many small businesses do you know that are just sitting on an asset waiting for it to appreciate so they can sell it? And if they did happen to have an appreciating asset sitting around and decided to sell it at a profit, the profit drops to the bottom line, is distributed to the owner, and he or she pays personal income tax on it.

So you see, even if a business had a capital gain, that gain flows down to the owner, who pays taxes on it as income tax, not as a capital gains tax.

95% of small businesses don't pay federal taxes. Not even (and especially) capital gains taxes.

So once again, PresBo is engaging his smoke and mirror trick of announcing some benefit that really is no benefit at all. Only the dumb masses don't know any different. They will continue to repeat talking points they hear on the nightly news, who are also either too ignorant of the reality, or are complicit in hiding the truth from We The People.

"The American people's virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Lomax, 1799. ME 10:123

My Top 10 Reasons to Stop Health Care Reform

2009-11-23T13:06:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, the Senate voted to proceed with debate on the 2,074 page Health Care Reform bill. Through researching a series of websites, I’ve put together what I think is a Top 10 Reasons to Pressure Your Congressman/woman to Vote Against this Bill.

1. America cannot afford this.

It will cost $2.5 trillion in the first 10 years of full implementation (2014-2023). The revenue collection portion of this bill starts in 2010, but benefits do not start until 2014. They are funding 6 years of coverage with 10 years of taxes. This is the only way they can make it “affordable” and keep the estimate of cost under $1 billion for the first 10 years (2010 - 2020). What happens after the first 10 years? The plan cost will skyrocket to the $2.5 trillion.

http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=0d9716a1-1b78-be3e-e01d-d3bf00d02571

2. Your taxes will go up.

Under the Reid bill, the federal government expects to generate revenue from tax increases that include but are not limited to:

• $156 billion in taxes levied against insurers, pharmaceutical companies and the medical device industry which will be passed on to consumers.
• $149 billion in taxes levied against individual health insurance plans (A 40% excise tax on insurance plans costing more than $8,500 a year per individual or more than $23,000 a year per family).
• $64 billion in new income taxes which the government expects to raise because it predicts that employers will soon offer taxable wages rather than non-taxable health insurance to employees.
• $28 billion in employer penalties which will be paid by employees in the form of lower wages.
• $8 billion in penalties paid to the IRS by those who do not purchase insurance.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Big-tax-hikes-cast-shadow-over-health-bill-8559053-70568197.html

3. Your insurance premiums will go up.

States that have implemented plans similar to the Reid bill have seen dramatic increases in the cost of health insurance premiums. Massachusetts, the state with insurance regulations that most resemble Reid’s proposal, has by far the highest insurance prices of any state in the country. The Reid plan will incorporate these same failed reform efforts, driving consumer prices up and affordability down.

The government-run public option would have even higher premiums than private plans. The CBO stated that the government plan would, “typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges.”

4. The Bill will not reduce Medicare Fraud

The Senate bill bases some of its revenue estimates on cutting out Medicare fraud, thus saving money. In October, CBS’s 60 Minutes reported that Medicare, “provides a rich and steady income stream for criminals who are constantly finding new ways to steal a sizable chunk of the half trillion dollars that are paid out each year in Medicare benefits.” The report found that every year, $60 billion in taxpayer money is lost to fraud.

To put the $60 billion in fraud in perspective, Medicare loses seven times as much money in fraud every year than the combined profits of the 14 health insurance companies on the Fortune 500.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/industries/223/index.html

If Medicare fraud was so easy to fix, why haven’t we fixed it by now?

5. The Senate bill hurts seniors.

Where is the funding for the $2.5 trillion dollar Reid bill supposed to come from? Over the next ten years:

• $436 billion of the total cost is set to come from cuts in Medicare.
• $192 billion of that $436 billion will come from reductions in non-doctor payment rates for care for seniors.
• $118 billion will come from cuts in the popular Medicare Advantage plan which offers one out of every five senior citizens more benefits than traditional Medicare.
• $43 billion will come from cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals that are already struggling to serve low-income patients.
• $83 billion will come from additional unspecified cuts to Medicare.

You want to tell your parents, or should I?

6. Congress will use the force of government to make you buy a product.

The Senate bill includes an individual mandate which will make every American purchase health insurance. Citizens will be forced to buy insurance simply because they are alive. Non-compliance with this mandate could result in harsh fines which are considered "taxes." Forget to pay such "taxes" and you could be fined an additional $25,000 and even face up to a year in jail.

http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/max/obamacare-no-insurance-go-to-jail

7. Mandating health insurance is unconstitutional.

Of the powers that the founding document vests in Congress, there are two that Congress may argue grant it the ability to mandate the purchase of insurance. They are the power to, “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to… provide for the… general welfare of the United States,” and the power to, “regulate commerce… among the several States.”

Article I Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to collect excise and capitation taxes. The 16th Amendment created a national income tax. But an extra tax burden placed on individuals who choose not to purchase health insurance does not fall under any of these three categories.

An excise tax is a surcharge on a purchase but this “individual mandate tax” does not tax people for what they purchase, it taxes them for what they refuse to purchase. The Supreme Court has held that in order for something to be considered commerce it must at very least be an economic activity (Google Gibbons v. Ogden). A mandate on health insurance forces Americans to purchase a product simply because they are alive. Merely existing is not an economic activity.

http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/max/obamacare-no-insurance-go-to-jail

8. The Reid bill puts the unelected Secretary of Health and Human Services in control of our health care.

The Senate bill uses the phrase the “Secretary shall” 725 times. Each time it is granting a power to whoever is appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, instead of empowering individuals.

What “shall” the Secretary do?

• Page 19: “The Secretary shall promulgate regulations to define the dependents to which coverage shall be made available…”
• Page 103: “The Secretary shall define the essential health benefits…”
• Page 935: “The Secretary shall impose a civil money penalty…”
• Page 1086: “The Secretary shall give priority for the award of the contracts or grants…”
• Page 1117: “The Secretary shall take such action as may be necessary…”
• Page 1168: “[T]he Secretary shall begin implementing the 5-year campaign.”
• Page 1447: “The Secretary shall require federally qualified health centers to submit to the Secretary such information as the Secretary may require…”
• Page 2061: “The Secretary shall take action to approve or deny any application…”

9. The Senate bill is massive.

The bill is 2,074 pages long. The bigger the bill, the more room there is for earmarks. As more people read this bill, more disturbing parts will surely be exposed, like the $100 million for Louisiana which was included as a shameless attempt to garner support from an undecided Senator.

10. The Senate bill does not even address Tort Reform.

Can they seriously think this is a Healthcare Reform bill and not even mention Tort Reform? After all, what is it that has driven up the cost of healthcare more than ANY SINGLE item? Malpractice lawsuits. Nope, not mentioned, not even once.

Oh, what the heck, let's throw in one more just for good measure....

11. This isn't really a Health Care Reform bill; It's an Income Redistribution bill.

Come on, People. Anyone can see what is going on here. Our government has been taken over by bureaucrats that believe in wealth distribution. What was it that President Obama said to Joe the Plumber? "I just want to be sure that everybody who is behind you, that they have a chance at success, too....when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

If you think I'm stretching here, watch this video clip about the people that the President has surrounded himself with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnFG1jVflsY

Don't waste your vote in November 2010. It may be your last one.

Climate-Gate, The Global Warming Scandal of 2009

2009-11-23T08:43:00.000-08:00

The big scandal this week, although the MSM has barely reported on it, is that a database of global warming research was hacked, and emails between and amongst scientists were posted on the internet. “Big deal”, you say? It is when the emails are from one of the biggest, most widely regarded research agencies, who’s climate change (read: global warming) data is used by many governments to propose cap & trade and green energy policies, and implicates the researchers of doctoring the data to backup their global warming findings.

The money going to the groups in grants and other funding is tremendous. Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), whose database was hacked last week, logged 55 endowments from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of £13,718,547, or approximately $22.6 million. Publishing questionable climate data can be an expensive habit.

There was an equal number of "energy agencies" that CRU was targeting for future funding. Three -- the Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative, and the Energy Saving Trust -- are U.K.-based consultancy and funding specialists promoting "new energy" technologies with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The fourth -- Renewables North West -- is an American company promoting the expansion of solar, wind, and geothermal energy in the Pacific Northwest.

As evident by their names, these organizations have a financial interest in the promotion of pro-climate change publications that CRU is known for.

When scientists research or publish works that dispute man-made global warm, they are excoriated, threatened or otherwise silenced (Google Jim Hansen, US EPA scientist),

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657655235589119.html

When MIT’s Richard Lindzen delivered a presentations leading to the conclusion that climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is about 0.5°C, not the 1.5°-5°C predicted by CRU’s models, all we hear is that the professor once charged oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services and is therefore an unreliable big-oil hack,

http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/09/richard-lindzen-heartland-denier/

Well, the shoe may be on the other foot for a change. The Global averaged satellite data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville for June 2009 shows that the Earth’s mean temperature continues to drop steadily. The earth’s temperature has dropped 0.74 ºF (0.39 ºC) since Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth” back in 2006.

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1799/Earths-Fever-Breaks-Global-temperatures-have-plunged-74degF-since-Gore-released-An-Inconvenient-Truth

Al Gore and CRU must hate it when peer-reviewed science destroys a perfectly good scare tactic like man-made global warming. Has anyone noticed that the most vigorous supporters of the global warming myth are not scientists – they are politicians?

Back to the CRU hacked database. It included emails back and forth between several scientists. I’ve included one below:

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow. I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

Cheers
Phil

"Hide the decline"! You can see what we’re up against, People. There is just too much money in climate research nowadays to take anything you read for granted. If there is something out there that will cost you money, require you to pay a new tax or otherwise take money out of your pocket and put it into someone else’s, do some homework on your own. The climate change/go-green push in the world today is worth too much money to a lot of people to not at least question their sources, science and funding.

The Dangers of Trying Enemy Combatants in Criminal Courts

2009-11-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and five other terrorists would be tried in a civilian court in New York City rather than before a military tribunal. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked during a Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight hearing of the U.S. Department of Justice,: “Can you give me a case in United States history where an enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?”

Holder responded: “I don’t know. I’d have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I’ve made…” At which point Graham interjected: “We’re making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I’ll answer it for you. The answer is no.”

The U.S. Constitution protects American citizens and visitors from the moment they are suspected of criminal wrongdoing through a potential trial. These same protections are not, have never, and should not be granted to enemy combatants in war.

Congress overwhelmingly reaffirmed their commitment to military commissions in 2006, which have historically been the way that we respond to acts of war. To abandon our two centuries of tradition and to substitute some new civilian procedure as a response to such attacks endangers the security of our country and our national interest.

See former US Attorney General Edwin Meese's statement at http://bit.ly/2NhQBk

Eric Holder assured the public yesterday that we could rest easy. That the evidence against him is substantial.

If you are like me, KSM "walking" is not what we're worried about. He has elected to represent himself, so he'll be able to subpoena information from the prosecution that will make him privy to how the US gathers intelligence and how we use it to fight the war on terror. Is Holder naive enough, or just maybe smug enough, that he thinks this information won't make it out of room?

This decision will put our troops and intelligence agency personnel at risk. It will put the citizens of New York City at risk, as the trial will be a target for terror acts...think about the worldwide exposure, what with all the news cameras rolling, if an attack were to happen at the federal courthouse.

One of the suggestions of the real reason this is happening is to intentionally release, leak or otherwise get out classified information about captures, interrogations, etc., and to have liberal lawyers run to the Hague with it to try to get war crimes charges files against members of the Bush administration and the intelligence community.

If that happens, just watch the rank and file of the CIA, NSA and FBI start to pull back on their efforts in fear that they too, will be prosecuted some day.

This is a bad decision. This is the express purpose that Guantanamo was created. It keeps these dangerous foes out of the US and lets them be tried by military tribunals, as has been done since the birth of our Country.

Excerpts from The Heritage Foundation [morningbell@heritage.org]

Salary Caps; They're not just for the Financial Sector Anymore

2009-11-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

The Dems, it appears, will stop at nothing to make their Guy look good. MSNBC reported last week that the White House announced that 650,000 jobs have been created or saved since Obama took office:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33548535/

Wow! 650,000 jobs. Never mind that economists almost unanimously agree that "jobs saved" is an impossible metric to measure. Never mind that over the same period, over 6 million jobs have been lost. Never mind that the October jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported unemployment is now officially 10%.

Fox News reported today that the jobs created or saved claims are being wildly exaggerated. Oh, Fox News is biased? OK, let's look at a couple of historically liberal-friendly news sources.

How about the Boston Globe? One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/11/11/stimulus_fund_job_benefits_exaggerated_review_finds/

The "jobs saved" metric is impossible to measure. Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula:

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," said the Montana Democrat. "If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

This is a brilliant strategy by Obama. He knows he'll get the MSM on board to help spread the propaganda. It will only be the rogue, non-news networks like Fox, the true financial reporting organizations like Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451592762396883.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aUuHhaDx8Hr8

that will report the facts - the Stimulus is not working, and is only delaying the economic recovery. When you are having financial problems, do you stop spending, or do you borrow more money and start over-spending? Exactly!

And you think that the wage and salary caps that the Obama administration is placing on the financial industry is going to stop there? Well, let me introduce you to the new Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)clause that is in all federal contracts that are funded by the "Recovery Act". FAR Clause 52.204-11 (d) (8) says a contractor that is awarded work funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act must report "Names and total compensation of each of the five most highly compensated officers of the Contractor for the calendar year in which the contract is awarded".

https://www.acquisition.gov/FAR/current/html/52_200_206.html#wp1144992

Now why in the world would they want that information, if not to start tracking those individuals and at some point, begin to regulate what they can be paid. After all, how is performing a contract using federal dollars any different from getting a bail-out?

American have been asleep at the wheel. We need to wake up before the car runs off the road. This is a rumble strip you are hearing under your tires. It is meant to snap you back to reality and pay attention.

What can we do to counter this affront to our liberty? Vote them all out. The Founding Fathers never meant for politics to be a career. Get elected, go serve, go home. The only way We The People will change this is to get term limits imposed. Congress will never vote themselves term limits. Kind of like them voting themselves a raise earlier this year while the rest of us are throttling back, living within our means and doing our best to survive the economic downturn. The only way we'll do it is to vote them all out. Every time. One and done.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. The Congressional elections in 2010 will be the first chance for us to show them that the Government works for the People, not the other way around.

The Way Taxes and Government Mandates Really Work

2009-11-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

Please share this story with your friends and family who don’t understand how taxation works. This is a speech given by a small business owner to his employees.

“I would like to start by thanking you for attending this meeting, though it's not like you had much of a choice. After all, attendance was mandatory. I'm also glad many of you accepted my invitation to your family members to be here as well. I have a few remarks to make to all of you, and then we'll retire to the ballroom for a great lunch and some employee awards.

I felt that this meeting was important enough to close all 12 of our tire and automotive shops today so that you could be here. To reassure you, everybody is being paid for the day --- except me. Since our stores are closed we're making no money. That economic loss is mine to sustain. We have 157 full time employees and around 30 additional part-timers. All of you are here. I thank you for that.

When you walked into this auditorium you were handed a rather thick 78-page document. Many of you have already taken a peek. You were probably surprised to see that it's my personal tax return for 2008. Those of you who are adept at reading these tax returns will see that last year my taxable income was $534,000.00. Now I'm sure this seems rather high to many of you. So ... let's talk about this tax return.

Our Company is what we call a Sub-S - a Subchapter S corporation. The name comes from a particular part of our tax code. Sub-S status means that the income from all 12 of our stores is reported on my personal tax return. Businesses that report their income on the owner's personal tax return are referred to as "small businesses." So, you see now that this $534,000 is really the total taxable income - the total combined profit from all 12 of our stores. That works out to an average of a bit over $44,000 per store.

Why did I feel it important for you to see my actual 2008 tax return? Well, there's a lot of rhetoric being thrown around today about taxes, small businesses and rich people. To the people in charge in Washington right now I'm a wealthy American making over a half-million dollars a year. Most Americans would agree: I'm just another rich guy; after all ... I had over a half-million in income last year, right? In this room we know that the reality is that I'm a small business owner who runs 12 retail establishments and employs 187 people. Now here's something that shouldn't surprise you, but it will: Just under 100 percent ... make that 99.7 percent of all employers in this country are small businesses, just like ours.

Every one of these businesses reports their income on a personal income tax return. You need to understand that small businesses like ours are responsible for about 80 percent of all private sector jobs in this country, and about 70 percent of all jobs that have been created over the past year. You also need to know that when you hear some politician talking about rich people who earn over $200,000 or $500,000 a year, they're talking about the people who create the jobs.

The people who are now running the show in Washington have been talking for months about raising taxes on wealthy Americans. I already know that in two years my federal income taxes are going to go up by about 4.5 percent. That happens when Obama and the Democrats allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. When my taxes climb by 4.5 percent the Democrats will be on television saying that this really isn't a tax increase. They'll explain that the Bush tax cuts have expired .nothing more. Here at our Company, we'll know that almost 5% has been taken right off of our bottom line. And that means it will be coming off your bottom line.

Numbers are boring; I know ... but let's talk a bit more about that $534,000. That's the money that was left last year from company revenues after I paid all of the salaries and expenses of running this business. Now I could have kept every penny of that for myself, but that would have left us with nothing to grow our business, to attract new customers and to hire new employees. You're aware that we've been talking about opening new stores. To do that I will have to buy or lease property, construct a building and purchase inventory. I also have to hire additional people to work in those stores. These people wouldn't immediately be earning their pay. So, where do you think the money for all of this comes from? Right out of our profits ... right out of that $534,000. I need to advertise to bring customers in, especially in these tough times. Where do you think that money comes from? Oh sure, I can count it as an expense when I file my next income tax return, but for right now that comes from either current revenues or last year's profits. Revenues right now aren't all that hot ... so do the math. A good effective advertising campaign might cost us more than $300,000.

Is this all starting to come together for you now?

Right now the Democrats are pushing a nationalized health care plan that, depending on who's doing the talking, will add anywhere from another two percent to an additional 4.6 percent to my taxes. If I add a few more stores, which I would like to do, and if the economy improves, my taxable income…our business income ... could go over one million dollars! If that happens the Democrats have yet another tax waiting, another five percent plus! I've really lost track of all of the new government programs the Democrats and President Obama are proposing that they claim they will be able to finance with new taxes on what they call "wealthy Americans."

And while we're talking about health care, let me explain something else to you. I understand that possibly your biggest complaint with our company is that we don't provide you with health insurance. That is because as your employer I believe that it is my responsibility to provide you with a safe workplace and a fair wage and to do all that I can to preserve and grow this company that provides us all with income. I no more have a responsibility to provide you with health insurance than I do with life, auto or homeowner's insurance. As you know, I have periodically invited agents for health insurance companies here to provide you with information on private health insurance plans.

The Democrats are proposing to levy yet another tax against our Company in the amount of 8 percent of my payroll as a penalty for not providing you with health insurance. You should know that if they do this I will be reducing every person's salary or hourly wage by that same 8 percent. This will not be done to put any more money in my pocket. It will be done to make sure that I don't suffer financially from the Democrat's efforts to place our healthcare under the control of the federal government. It is your health, not mine. It is your healthcare, not mine. These are your expenses, not mine. If you think I'm wrong about all this, I would sure love to hear your reasoning.

Try to understand what I'm telling you here. Those people that Obama and the Democrats call "wealthy Americans" are, in very large part, America’s small business owners. I'm one of them. You have the evidence, and surely you don't think that the owner of a bunch of tire stores is anything special. That $534,000 figure on my income tax return puts me squarely in Democrat crosshairs when it comes to tax increases.

Let's be clear about this ... crystal clear. Any federal tax increase on me is going to cost you money, not me. Any new taxes on our Company will be new taxes that you, or the people I don't hire to staff the new stores I won't be building, will be paying. Do you understand what I'm telling you? You've heard about things rolling downhill, right? Fine...then you need to know that taxes, like that other stuff, roll downhill. Now you and I may understand that you are not among those that the Democrats call "wealthy Americans," but when this "tax the rich" thing comes down you are going to be standing at the bottom of the mud slide, if you get my drift. That's life in the big city, my friends ... where elections have consequences.

You know our economy is very weak right now. I've pledged to get us through this without layoffs or cuts in your wages and benefits. It's too bad the politicians can't get us through this without attacking our profits. To insure our survival I have to take a substantial portion of that $534,000 and set it aside for unexpected expenses and a worsening economy. Trouble is, the government is eyeing that money too ... and they have the guns. If they want it, they can take it.

I don't want to make this too long. There's a great lunch waiting for us all. But you need to understand what's happening here. I've worked hard for 23 years to create this business. There were many years where I couldn't take a penny in income because every dollar was being dedicated to expanding the business. There were tough times when it took every dollar of revenues to replenish our inventory and cover your paychecks. During those times I earned nothing. If you want to see those tax returns, just let me know.

OK ... I know I'm repeating myself here. I don't hire stupid people, and you are probably getting it now. So let me just ramble for a few more minutes. Most Americans don't realize that when the Democrats talk about raising taxes on people making more than $250 thousand a year, they're talking about raising taxes on small businesses. The U.S. Treasury Department says that six out of every ten individuals in this country with incomes of more than $280,000 are actually small business owners. About one-half of the income in this country that would be subject to these increased taxes is from small businesses like ours. Depending on how many of these wonderful new taxes the Democrats manage to pass, this company could see its tax burden increase by as much as $60,000. Perhaps more. I know a lot of you voted for President Obama. A lot of you voted for Democrats across the board. Whether you voted out of support for some specific policies, or because you liked his slogans, you need to learn one very valuable lesson from this election. Elections have consequences. You might have thought it would be cool to have a president who looks like you; or a president who is young, has a buff body, and speaks eloquently when there's a teleprompter in the neighborhood. Maybe you liked his promises to tax the rich. Maybe you believed his promise not to raise taxes on people earning less than a certain amount. Maybe you actually bought into his promise to cut taxes on millions of Americans who actually don't pay income taxes in the first place. Whatever the reason, your vote had consequences; and here they are.

Bottom line? I'm not taking this hit alone. As soon as the Democrats manage to get their tax increases on the books, I'm going to take steps to make sure that my family isn't affected. When you own the business that is what you're allowed to do. I built this business over a period of 23 years, and I'm not going to see my family suffer because we have a president and a congress who think that wealth is distributed rather than earned. Any additional taxes, of whatever description, that President Obama and the Democrats inflict on this business will come straight out of any funds I have set aside for expansion or pay and benefit increases. Any plans I might have had to hire additional employees for new stores will be put aside. Any plans for raises for the people I now have working for me will be shelved. Year-end bonuses might well be eliminated. That may sound rough, but that's the reality.

You're going to continue to hear a lot of anti-wealth rhetoric out there from the media and from the left. You can chose to believe what you wish, but when it comes to Carrington Automotive you will know the truth. The books are open to any of you at any time. I have nothing to hide. I would hope that other small business owners out there would hold meetings like this one, but I know it won't happen that often. One of the lessons to be learned here is that taxes ... all taxes ... and all regulatory costs that are placed on businesses anywhere in this country, will eventually be passed right on down to individuals; individuals such as yourself. This hasn't been about admonishing anyone and it hasn't been about issuing threats. This is part of the education you should have received in the government schools, but didn't. Class is now dismissed.”

The Ambivolent Ruling Class

2009-10-31T06:02:00.000-07:00

The government released economic growth numbers for the third quarter this week, showing a 3.5% increase over last quarter. Wall Street responded with a 200 point gain, the largest single day gain since back in July. It was promptly followed by a 250 point loss the next day.

The Obama administration announced that the Stimulus has "saved or created" 650,000 jobs so far this year. Problem is, economists almost unanimously agree there really is no way to count “saved” jobs. On top of that, there is (just like a lot of things associated with this administration) rampant fraud and mis-reporting going on, including companies counting workers twice because they worked on two different projects; companies counting workers that were temporary and only held the job for a month, and flat out blatant over-reporting of the numbers by several states.

Oh yeah, the other problem is that over the same period, the US has lost nearly 5 million jobs.

Our politicians either lie about what is in a bill, or simply try to hide what's in it, or worse, subvert the Constitutional process and add things in outside of committee or in the “reconciliation” process, and then give no one time to read the changes before it's voted on.

Where am I going with this? We The People have lost faith in our government to serve in our best interests. While We The People feel disheartened, our leaders seem to be willfully, almost gleefully mindless about our concerns. With a few admirable exceptions, the ruling class in the United States is made up of the sons and daughters of abundance. Their families are the "old money" families of America. They aren't worried about raising taxes on you, my and their incomes, because they've already made all their money, sheltered it from taxes, or ponied up during lower-tax administrations. Bottom line - they don't care what We The People think. They will do whatever they think they need to do to stay in power, whether that is buying votes through earmarks or by funding ACORN, or by passing legislation that will put more and more of the population on the receiving end of government handouts.

Economists almost all agree that Cap and Trade legislation will cost jobs and drive our economy into ruin. History shows it will - just look at the European Union.

Doctors, economists and even the Congressional Budget Office all agree that government run healthcare will drive up rates, ration service and result in lower quality healthcare. History shows it will - just look at the UK and Canada.

The business leadership in the US - those that pay almost 80% of all taxes - will get to a point that they say - "Enough!" They'll just quit. They'll close businesses, layoff workers, and just walk away. Wouldn't you if the burden got so bad that the government took more than you got to keep? They'll go somewhere else and start all over again.

Want a few examples? Look at New York and New Jersey. This week, the New York Post reported that 1.5 million New Yorkers had left the state between 2000 and 2008, more than a million of those from New York City, taking their tax dollars with them. What will New York do? They'll raise taxes on everyone remaining to make up the difference.

New Jersey is the same. People used to move out of New York to New Jersey to avoid the high(er) taxes. But now, New Jersey has one of the highest tax rates in the nation. The average one year expenditure on a child in NJ for public school is over $24,000, yet their public school system is one of the worst in the country. Most private schools in NJ don't cost half that much.

OK. I've rambled on and it's time to make my point. America is losing faith. In recessions past, we always believed there was a light at the end of the tunnel, that it would get better. No so much anymore. I think most of us feel that the end of America as we know/knew it is upon us.

The time for action is now. We must speak our minds. We must write and call our congressmen/women and let them know that if they do not act responsibly and in our interests, then we will vote them out of office. The firestorm about the healthcare bill that erupted during Congress' fall recess town hall meetings must be maintained. People got riled up. Congress got scared. That is a good thing. A government should be scared of its People. Remember, "the Constitution is not an instrument for the Government to restrain the People, it is an instrument for People to restrain the Government" ~ Patrick Henry

Notes From the Bank of America Econmic Update Luncheon

2009-10-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

I attended a luncheon hosted by Bank of America earlier this week. The speaker was Joe Quinlan, one of B of A's chief economists. His credentials are long, and include testimonies to Congress, publications, etc..(link to his bio below...)

http://www.theglobalist.com/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=389

The high points of his 30 minute talk are below.

Unemployment - when you add in temps, the overlooked unemployed and the "discouraged" workers that have given up (the DoL stops tracking these in the numbers), the current unemployment rate in the US is about 16% (not the 9.7% that the current Administration is reporting).

Unemployment always lags behind other economic indicators, and will likely peak in late Q1 of 2010 before it starts to rebound, as Q1 and Q2 hiring starts to pick up.

The current US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is $14 Trillion dollars annually This is bigger than the next three largest GDP's combined (Germany, China, Japan).

The current US deficit is 10% of our GDP - or $1.4 Trillion.

Quinlan believes that the devaluation of the dollar is misdiagnosed/misunderstood. He thinks it is actually a good thing, as the weaker dollar will make our goods and services more affordable to the world, creating a higher demand and higher exports, thus creating jobs to keep up with the demand.

Also, in current world currency reserves, the dollar accounts for 63% of all holdings, with the next closest currency, the Euro, accounting for only 20%. He thinks the Dollar has to fall a long way for it to be replaced as the world's trade currency.

When asked about what will drive the world and the US economies over the next decade, he replied (for the US) "Health care, which currently makes up 16% of our economy." He noted that the current Obamacare efforts could easily push that number over 20%.

Regarding the world's economic drivers, he stated that 44% of the world's population has still never made a phone call or logged onto a computer. He feels that technology will be the world's economic driver in the next decade.

Sectors to watch/invest in? IT, Industrials, Energy & Materials, with Defense (the US spends $10 billion per month on current war efforts) and Water Infrastructure close seconds. He opined that while everyone thinks oil will always be king, water is a more critical commodity for survival. Companies that specialize in water infrastructure, purification, etc. will experience growth.

If you're interested in currency trading, he suggested the Canadian dollar and the Australian dollar.

His overall assessment of the economy is that the recovery has started, the weakening dollar is not a bad thing during the recovery and may well speed it up. Government intervention into the financial markets was necessary at the time, but it's now time to start getting them back out of it.

He also stated that the commercial real estate market is likely the next big shoe to drop that may cause additional market retraction. Until banks get those taken care of, and all the upside down home mortgages that they are still just sitting on, expect the market to be unstable.

Not sure if this gives any of you hope or despair. I always feel that the more information I have, the better decisions I can make. His talk provided me some insight into currency values and their effect on recovering economies. That part give me some solace. The rest wasn't a lot of new information, but hearing it from an economist instead of a politician or biased new source is encouraging.

Economic Recovery...Yeah, Right!

2009-10-17T05:07:00.001-07:00

We've heard all the "good" news over the last week from the MSM and the Democrats: "The recession is over!", "The DOW is back over 10,000!", "the Stimulus is having the desired effect". Seems that they are overlooking (or intentionally omitting) some very vital facts. The credit markets in the US are still in near catastrophic condition.

Though all the Stimulus and TARP bail-outs, nothing has yet to be done to fix all of the "toxic" assets on bank's balance sheets. Not only are almost all of the bad residential mortgages still there, but the scroll on Fox News last night was "Obama briefed on next shoe to drop - commercial real estate loans." I have been saying for months that the commercial real estate loan market fall-out was yet to arrive. Builders of high rises, condos, strip malls and office buildings took loans out to build. These loans are typically "balloon" notes, meaning that very little payment is due during construction, but that at a certain point, usually 3, 5 or 7 years after the loan is taken, the entire balance is due. These loans work well in a growing economy, because by the time the loan is due, the occupancy of the building is generating enough income to pay the loan off. Not so in this recession. Balloon payments are coming due, builders are struggling, and no one is renting the new office space or buying condos. Builders do not have the money to pay the balloon payment.

We'll all have to see just how that shakes out.

One of the reasons that people aren't leasing office space and buying condos is that the credit markets are still stagnant. The government has provided guarantees for the banks that are "too large to fail". They've provided no such guarantees for all the mid-size and small banks that have done most of the lending to the small and medium sized business that do most of the hiring. According to a WSJ article on Friday, October 16th, Small and medium businesses (those with one to 499 employees) account for 100 million jobs in the U.S. In comparison, large businesses (>500 employees) account for only 17 million jobs in the U.S. Without access to capital to grow, these engines of the economy will continue to lay off employees and defer growth plans, creating a cycle of shrinking consumer credit and demand.

Even though the government says that credit markets have loosened, the same article reports that only $10 billion in credit backed securities were issued in 2009 as compared to $700 billion in 2007. This clearly shows that lending has not returned to anywhere near its past levels.

Why is this? The banks have no incentive to lend. Most still have significant numbers of bad loans on their books. They need to hold cash as reserves to cover them should they ultimately fail. If the banks would recognize these loans now and take the write-offs, they'd go bankrupt. They are hoping that over time, the asset value will go back up or that the borrowers will eventually start making payments again.

Why should banks make potentially risky loans when they can make risk-free loans to the government. Under the TARP legislation, banks can borrow an almost unlimited amount of money from the Fed at (currently) 0.25%, then turn around and loan the money back to the government at prime rate, which as of this writing, is 3.25%.

http://www.bankrate.com/rates/interest-rates/prime-rate.aspx

What a scam. Borrow money at 0.25%, them loan it back to who you borrowed it from (at no risk on non-payment) for 3.25%. No wonder all the big banks are reporting huge profits for the last quarter! Wall Street gets richer, the government grows more powerful, you, me and Joe the Plumber take it in the wallet.

Folks, my suggestion is that you get rid of as much debt as you can, start buying gold, silver, nickel and other precious metals, and when the 2010 Congressional elections come around, vote every last one of them out of office.

I think everyone (except sitting congressmen & congresswomen) believe that term limits are necessary. They'll never vote it on themselves. We'll need a grass-roots movement to "Vote Them All Out!".

Unemployment, Minimum Wage and Teenagers

2009-10-05T16:06:00.001-07:00

There was an op-ed in Saturday's Wall Street Journal about the impacts of the recent minimum wage hike on the Country's teenage workforce. Earlier this year, University of California-Irvine economist David Neumark wrote that the impending 70 cents an hour increase would cost some 300,000 teens their jobs. The latest increase, $0.75 per hour, took effect in July. August and September job numbers subsequently showed huge job losses for teens. No - they didn't just all go back to school. The numbers only count those that are actively looking for a job. The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest since World War II. Over 330,000 teen jobs have been lost in just 2 months.

Curiously enough, the demographic that likely most voted for or at least supported Obama, black teens, was the hardest hit. The black teen rate shot up from 39.2 to 50.4%!

What did Congress expect would happen when they forced employers to raise wages in the middle of a recession? Even though Congress spent $1.5 Billion (with a "B") in the Stimulus bill on summer youth employment and training programs, these numbers suggest that more jobs were lost than were created by the programs.

Congress and the Obama administration continue to ignore the facts: higher minimum wages lead to higher unemployment. Didn't Obama pledge to "follow the science"? Two years ago, Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 studies done on the link between higher minimum wages and unemployment levels, and concluded that the evidence was overwhelming that the "young and least skilled suffer loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased."

Now for some basic math...

According to US Department of Labor statistics, there are roughly 139 million "civilian" people employed in the US. Of these, roughly 4.6 million teens, of which 2.2 million make at or below the minimum wage. 2.2 million is 1.58% of the labor force.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

The Democrats make a huge deal, in fact, most of them make it a part of their election platform, that they'll raise the minimum wage. So they are basically saying they'll go to the mat for 1.5% of working American's, mostly teens, most of which are not even voters? Gimme a break, Something else is at work here.

Can you say Unions? Yes, guess who else gets a raise when the minimum wage goes up? Most union wages are based on Prevailing Wage, which is determined using minimum wage as a baseline. When the minimum goes up, so does the prevailing wage, and all the unions get a raise.

Now, the Dems have just gone from 1.5% of the workforce, to around 20% of the workforce. The Democrats know they'll get no traction with most of America by promising things to the unions, so the get sympathy traction by promising to help the unfortunate who eke out a living at minimum wage, and demonize the employers for not paying more along the way.

We all have to remember, in Washington, nothing is as it seems. We must dig deeper that the Mainstream Media, and satisfy ourselves of the facts. Too many Americans have let themselves be lemmings and follow the MSM and Washington over a cliff.

As an old favorite radio personality Red Neckerson says "Wake up, America!"

Devaluation of the Dollar

2009-10-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

Well, we (at least those of us with active brainwaves) knew this had to be coming. With the Fed printing money like it's going out of style, you had to wonder when the dollar would start to fall. During the G-20, Kevin Warsh, Federal Reserve Governor, stated both in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and in a press release, that "asset prices" may have to be devalued. He didn't actually say the dollar, but he really can't, because if he does, it will cause the dollar to fall.

Here's a video that discusses the Warsh's comments and why it will happen. Note the $60 trillion in "unfunded obligations" that Jim Rickards discusses:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=1275511738

He says that there is no combination of tax income that can come up with that amount of money. The only way to pay it off is to devalue the dollar, thus the debt. We can likely pay off half of it....read...the dollar's value will be cut in half in order to pay the debt the current administration has laden the country with.

If we all though $4 a gallon gas was bad, how does $8 a gallon sound to you. How's that hope and change working for you all?

Note how Rickards pegs the rate of devaluation of the dollar to the price of gold...if you see gold headed to $1500 and ounce, be prepared for drastic devaluation of the dollar.

A friend of my wife's who grew up in communist Slovenia said she remembered when their currency was so devalued and hyperinflation so bad that a dozen eggs cost 10 to 20 times what it did when their economy was stable. Once the wall fell and they became a capitalist nation, they recovered and now have a health economy. During a recent visit, she commented to my wife that she sees the U.S. doing the same things that her country did that pulled it into a deep recession and hyperinflation. She suggested buying gold and silver.

Based on the above video, maybe she was right.

What HB 3200 Really Says

2009-09-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

I know not many of us have the time to read a 1100 page bill, filled with legalese and politi-speak. I tried, and after 400 pages and several naps, I had to stop before my head exploded. This is the type of thing that keeps lawyers in business. No wonder it has no tort reform in it, it was written by lawyers.

But Alas, I have found a condensed version. Some brave soul who could accomplish what I could not. He read the whole bill, summarized the highlights, and annotated it back to the section so all of us "average Joe's" wouldn't have to brave the entire document.

So I bring to you, "What the Health Care Bill Actually Says", by John David Lewis...
If you are going to check his facts, go by the section number, not the page number. I've found that the page number varies by version and/or web browser.

The Health Care Bill: What HR 3200, ‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” Says

John David Lewis

August 6, 2009

What does the bill, HR 3200, short-titled ‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” actually say about major health care issues? I here pose a few questions in no particular order, citing relevant passages and offering a brief evaluation after each set of passages.

This bill is 1017 pages long. It is knee-deep in legalese and references to other federal regulations and laws. I have only touched pieces of the bill here. For instance, I have not considered the establishment of (1) “Health Choices Commissio0ner” (Section 141); (2) a “Health Insurance Exchange,” (Section 201), basically a government run insurance scheme to coordinate all insurance activity; (3) a Public Health Insurance Option (Section 221); and similar provisions.

This is the evaluation of someone who is neither a physician nor a legal professional. I am citizen, concerned about this bill’s effects on my freedom as an American. I would rather have used my time in other ways—but this is too important to ignore.

We may answer one question up front: How will the government will pay for all this? Higher taxes, more borrowing, printing money, cutting payments, or rationing services—there are no other options. We will all pay for this, enrolled in the government “option” or not.

(All bold type within the text of the bill is added for emphasis.)
WILL THE PLAN RATION MEDICAL CARE?

This is what the bill says, pages 284-288, SEC. 1151. REDUCING POTENTIALLY PREVENTABLE HOSPITAL READMISSIONS:

‘(ii) EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN READMISSIONS.—For purposes of clause (i), with respect to a hospital, excess readmissions shall not include readmissions for an applicable condition for which there are fewer than a minimum number (as determined by the Secretary) of discharges for such applicable condition for the applicable period and such hospital.

and, under “Definitions”:

‘‘(A) APPLICABLE CONDITION.—The term ‘applicable condition’ means, subject to subparagraph (B), a condition or procedure selected by the Secretary . . .

and:

‘‘(E) READMISSION.—The term ‘readmission’ means, in the case of an individual who is discharged from an applicable hospital, the admission of the individual to the same or another applicable hospital within a time period specified by the Secretary from the date of such discharge.

and:

‘‘(6) LIMITATIONS ON REVIEW.—There shall be no administrative or judicial review under section 1869, section 1878, or otherwise of— . . .

‘‘(C) the measures of readmissions . . .

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGES:

1. This section amends the Social Security Act

2. The government has the power to determine what constitutes an “applicable [medical] condition.”

3. The government has the power to determine who is allowed readmission into a hospital.

4. This determination will be made by statistics: when enough people have been discharged for the same condition, an individual may be readmitted.

5. This is government rationing, pure, simple, and straight up.

6. There can be no judicial review of decisions made here. The Secretary is above the courts.

7. The plan also allows the government to prohibit hospitals from expanding without federal permission: page 317-318.
Will the plan punish Americans who try to opt out?

What the bill says, pages 167-168, section 401, TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE:

‘‘(a) TAX IMPOSED.—In the case of any individual who does not meet the requirements of subsection (d) at any time during the taxable year, there is hereby imposed a tax equal to 2.5 percent of the excess of—

(1) the taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross income for the taxable year, over

(2) the amount of gross income specified in section 6012(a)(1) with respect to the taxpayer. . . .”

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGE:

1. This section amends the Internal Revenue Code.

2. Anyone caught without acceptable coverage and not in the government plan will pay a special tax.

3. The IRS will be a major enforcement mechanism for the plan.
What constitutes “acceptable” coverage?

Here is what the bill says, pages 26-30, SEC. 122, ESSENTIAL BENEFITS PACKAGE DEFINED:

(a) IN GENERAL.—In this division, the term ‘‘essential benefits package’’ means health benefits coverage, consistent with standards adopted under section 124 to ensure the provision of quality health care and financial security . . .

(b) MINIMUM SERVICES TO BE COVERED.—The items and services described in this subsection are the following:

(1) Hospitalization.

(2) Outpatient hospital and outpatient clinic services . . .

(3) Professional services of physicians and other health professionals.

(4) Such services, equipment, and supplies incident to the services of a physician’s or a health professional’s delivery of care . . .

(5) Prescription drugs.

(6) Rehabilitative and habilitative services.

(7) Mental health and substance use disorder services.

(8) Preventive services . . .

(9) Maternity care.

(10) Well baby and well child care . . .

(c) REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO COST-SHARING AND MINIMUM ACTUARIAL VALUE . . .

(3) MINIMUM ACTUARIAL VALUE.—

(A) IN GENERAL.—The cost-sharing under the essential benefits package shall be designed to provide a level of coverage that is designed to provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to approximately 70 percent of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the reference benefits package described in subparagraph (B).

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGES:

1. The bill defines “acceptable coverage” and leaves no room for choice in this regard.

2. By setting a minimum 70% actuarial value of benefits, the bill makes health plans in which individuals pay for routine services, but carry insurance only for catastrophic events, (such as Health Savings Accounts) illegal.
Will the PLAN destroy private health insurance?

Here is what it requires, for businesses with payrolls greater than $400,000 per year. (The bill uses “contribution” to refer to mandatory payments to the government plan.) Pages 149-150, SEC. 313, EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTIONS IN LIEU OF COVERAGE

(a) IN GENERAL.—A contribution is made in accordance with this section with respect to an employee if such contribution is equal to an amount equal to 8 percent of the average wages paid by the employer during the period of enrollment (determined by taking into account all employees of the employer and in such manner as the Commissioner provides, including rules providing for the appropriate aggregation of related employers). Any such contribution—

(1) shall be paid to the Health Choices Commissioner for deposit into the Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund, and

(2) shall not be applied against the premium of the employee under the Exchange-participating health benefits plan in which the employee is enrolled.

(The bill then includes a sliding scale of payments for business with less than $400,000 in annual payroll.)

The Bill also reserves, for the government, the power to determine an acceptable benefits plan: page 24, SEC. 115. ENSURING ADEQUACY OF PROVIDER NETWORKS.

5 (a) IN GENERAL.—A qualified health benefits plan that uses a provider network for items and services shall meet such standards respecting provider networks as the Commissioner may establish to assure the adequacy of such networks in ensuring enrollee access to such items and services and transparency in the cost-sharing differentials between in-network coverage and out-of-network coverage.

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGES:

1. The bill does not prohibit a person from buying private insurance.

2. Small businesses—with say 8-10 employees—will either have to provide insurance to federal standards, or pay an 8% payroll tax. Business costs for health care are higher than this, especially considering administrative costs. Any competitive business that tries to stay with a private plan will face a payroll disadvantage against competitors who go with the government “option.”

3. The pressure for business owners to terminate the private plans will be enormous.

4. With employers ending plans, millions of Americans will lose their private coverage, and fewer companies will offer it.

5. The Commissioner (meaning, always, the bureaucrats) will determine whether a particular network of physicians, hospitals and insurance is acceptable.

6. With private insurance starved, many people enrolled in the government “option” will have no place else to go.
Does the plan TAX successful Americans more THAN OTHERS?

Here is what the bill says, pages 197-198, SEC. 441. SURCHARGE ON HIGH INCOME INDIVIDUALS

‘‘SEC. 59C. SURCHARGE ON HIGH INCOME INDIVIDUALS.

‘‘(a) GENERAL RULE.—In the case of a taxpayer other than a corporation, there is hereby imposed (in addition to any other tax imposed by this subtitle) a tax equal to—

‘‘(1) 1 percent of so much of the modified adjusted gross income of the taxpayer as exceeds $350,000 but does not exceed $500,000,

‘‘(2) 1.5 percent of so much of the modified adjusted gross income of the taxpayer as exceeds $500,000 but does not exceed $1,000,000, and

‘‘(3) 5.4 percent of so much of the modified adjusted gross income of the taxpayer as exceeds $1,000,000.

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGE:

1. This bill amends the Internal Revenue Code.

2. Tax surcharges are levied on those with the highest incomes.

3. The plan manipulates the tax code to redistribute their wealth.

4. Successful business owners will bear the highest cost of this plan.
Does THE PLAN ALLOW THE GOVERNMENT TO set FEES FOR SERVICES?

What it says, page 124, Sec. 223, PAYMENT RATES FOR ITEMS AND SERVICES:

(d) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this subtitle shall be construed as limiting the Secretary’s authority to correct for payments that are excessive or deficient, taking into account the provisions of section 221(a) and the amounts paid for similar health care providers and services under other Exchange-participating health benefits plans.

(e) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this subtitle shall be construed as affecting the authority of the Secretary to establish payment rates, including payments to provide for the more efficient delivery of services, such as the initiatives provided for under section 224.

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGES:

1. The government’s authority to set payments is basically unlimited.
2. The official will decide what constitutes “excessive,” “deficient,” and “efficient” payments and services.

Will THE PLAN increase the power of government officials to SCRUTINIZE our private affairs?

What it says, pages 195-196, SEC. 431. DISCLOSURES TO CARRY OUT HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGE SUBSIDIES.

‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary, upon written request from the Health Choices Commissioner or the head of a State-based health insurance exchange approved for operation under section 208 of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, shall disclose to officers and employees of the Health Choices Administration or such State-based health insurance exchange, as the case may be, return information of any taxpayer whose income is relevant in determining any affordability credit described in subtitle C of title II of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. Such return information shall be limited to—

‘‘(i) taxpayer identity information with respect to such taxpayer,

‘‘(ii) the filing status of such taxpayer,

‘‘(iii) the modified adjusted gross income of such taxpayer (as defined in section 59B(e)(5)),

‘‘(iv) the number of dependents of the taxpayer,

‘‘(v) such other information as is prescribed by the Secretary by regulation as might indicate whether the taxpayer is eligible for such affordability credits (and the amount thereof), and

‘‘(vi) the taxable year with respect to which the preceding information relates or, if applicable, the fact that such information is not available.

And, page 145, section 312, EMPLOYER RESPONSIBILITY TO CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS EMPLOYEE AND DEPENDENT COVERAGE:

(3) PROVISION OF INFORMATION.—The employer provides the Health Choices Commissioner, the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Secretary of the Treasury, as applicable, with such information as the Commissioner may require to ascertain compliance with the requirements of this section.

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGE:

1. This section amends the Internal Revenue Code

2. The bill opens up income tax return information to federal officials.

3. Any stated “limits” to such information are circumvented by item (v), which allows federal officials to decide what information is needed.

4. Employers are required to report whatever information the government says it needs to enforce the plan.
Does the plan automatically enroll Americans in the GOVERNMENT plan?

What it says, page 102, Section 205, Outreach and enrollment of Exchange-eligible individuals and employers in Exchange-participating health benefits plan:

(3) AUTOMATIC ENROLLMENT OF MEDICAID ELIGIBLE INDIVIDUALS INTO MEDICAID.—The Commissioner shall provide for a process under which an individual who is described in section 202(d)(3) and has not elected to enroll in an Exchange-participating health benefits plan is automatically enrolled under Medicaid.

And, page 145, section 312:

(4) AUTOENROLLMENT OF EMPLOYEES.—The employer provides for autoenrollment of the employee in accordance with subsection (c).

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGES:

1. Do nothing and you are in.

2. Employers are responsible for automatically enrolling people who still work.
Does THE PLAN exempt federal OFFICIALS from COURT REVIEW?

What it says, page 124, Section 223, PAYMENT RATES FOR ITEMS AND SERVICES:

(f) LIMITATIONS ON REVIEW.—There shall be no administrative or judicial review of a payment rate or methodology established under this section or under section 224.

And, page 256, SEC. 1123. PAYMENTS FOR EFFICIENT AREAS.

‘‘(C) LIMITATION ON REVIEW.—There shall be no administrative or judicial review under section 1869, 1878, or otherwise, respecting—

‘‘(i) the identification of a county or other area under subparagraph (A); or

‘‘(ii) the assignment of a postal ZIP Code to a county or other area under subparagraph (B).

EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGES:

1. Sec. 1123 amends the Social Security Act, to allow the Secretary to identify areas of the country that underutilize the government’s plan “based on per capita spending.”

2. Parts of the plan are set above the review of the courts.

Mr. Lewis is a professor of classics at Duke University.

So, why do the Democrats keep saying this stuff isn't in there?

Swine Flu Pandemic? Really?

2009-08-11T17:13:00.001-07:00

As I keep hearing stories about the Swine Flu (H1N1) world-wide pandemic, I kept thinking that the numbers were just not adding up. As of August 6, 2009, according to the CDC, there have been 436 swine flu deaths in the US and its territories.

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm

Internationally, the CDC says there have been 1,154 deaths and 162,000 reported cases.

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/updates/international/

Herein lies the question. If a Swine Flu pandemic is 1,154 deaths world-wide since the beginning of the year, what would you call a virus that historically infects over 300,000 people in the United States and kills over 36,000 people, just in the United States, EVERY YEAR?

The CDC calls it the Common (Seasonal) Flu.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/index.htm

So, this begs the question...Why all the world-wide concern about a flu virus that has killed 1,154 people so far - WORLD-WIDE?

Well, there are the conspiracy theories about the vaccine:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/04/swine-flu-conspiracy.html

It could be just one more thing to distract the public's attention from US National politics.

Maybe a ploy by the drug companies to pump up sales?

We may never know. One thing we do know, is that based on the historical numbers, we all have a lot more to worry about from the seasonal flu bug than from the swine flu bug.

But it makes you wonder, doesn't it?

The Ultimate Sacrifice for Freedom

2009-08-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

I heard this story read on Neal Boortz's show yesterday. I had to find it and post it. Read on.....

"My lead flight attendant came to me and said, 'We have an H.R. on this flight.' H.R. stands for human remains. 'Are they military?' I asked. 'Yes', she said. 'Is there an escort?' I asked. 'Yes, I already assigned him a seat.' 'Would you please tell him to come to the flight deck. You can board him early', I said.

A short while later, a young Army sergeant entered the flight deck. He was the image of the perfectly dressed soldier. He introduced himself and I asked him about his soldier. The escorts of these fallen soldiers talk about them as if they are still alive and still with us. My soldier is on his way back to Virginia', he said. He proceeded to answer my questions, but offered no words on his own. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him and he said no. I told him that he had the toughest job in the military and that I appreciated the work that he does for the families of our fallen soldiers. The first officer and I got up out of our seats to shake his hand. He left the flight deck to find his seat.

We completed our preflight checks, pushed back and performed an uneventful departure. About 30 minutes into our flight I received a call from the lead flight attendant in the cabin. 'I just found out the family of the soldier we are carrying, is on board', he said. He then proceeded to tell me that the father, mother, wife and 2-year old daughter were escorting their son, husband, and father home. The family was upset because they were unable to see the container that the soldier was in before we left. We were on our way to a major hub at which the family was going to wait four hours for the connecting flight home to Virginia. The father of the soldier told the flight attendant that knowing his son was below him in the cargo compartment and being unable to see him was too much for him and the family to bear. He had asked the flight attendant if there was anything that could be done to allow them to see him upon our arrival. The family wanted to be outside by the cargo door to watch the soldier being taken off the airplane. I could hear the desperation in the flight attendant's voice when he asked me if there was anything I could do. 'I'm on it', I said. I told him that I would get back to him.

Airborne communication with my company normally occurs in the form of e-mail like messages. I decided to bypass this system and contact my flight dispatcher directly on a secondary radio. There is a radio operator in the operations control center who connects you to the telephone of the dispatcher. I was in direct contact with the dispatcher. I explained the situation I had onboard with the family and what it was the family wanted. He said he understood and that he would get back to me.

Two hours went by and I had not heard from the dispatcher. We were going to get busy soon and I needed to know what to tell the family. I sent a text message asking for an update. I saved the return message from the dispatcher and this following is the text:

'Captain, sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. There is policy on this now and I had to check on a few things. Upon your arrival a dedicated escort team will meet the aircraft. The team will escort the family to the ramp and plane side. A van will be used to load the remains with a secondary van for the family. The family will be taken to their departure area and escorted into the terminal where the remains can be seen on the ramp. It is a private area for the family only. When the connecting aircraft arrives, the family will be escorted onto the ramp and planeside to watch the remains being loaded for the final leg home. Captain, most of us here in flight control are veterans.
Please pass our condolences on to the family. Thanks.'

I sent a message back telling flight control thanks for a good job. I printed out the message and gave it to the lead flight attendant to pass on to the father. The lead flight attendant was very thankful and told me, 'You have no idea how much this will mean to them.' Things started getting busy for the descent, approach and landing. After landing, we cleared the runway and taxied to the ramp area. The ramp is huge with 15 gates on either side of the alleyway. It is always a busy area with aircraft maneuvering every which way to enter and exit. When we entered the ramp and checked in with the ramp controller, we were told that all traffic was being held for us.

'There is a team in place to meet the aircraft', we were told. It looked like it was all coming together, then I realized that once we turned the seat belt sign off, everyone would stand up at once and delay the family from getting off the airplane. As we approached our gate, I asked the copilot to tell the ramp controller we were going to stop short of the gate to make an announcement to the passengers. He did that and the ramp controller said, 'Take your time.'

I stopped the aircraft and set the parking brake. I pushed the public address button and said, 'Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking. I have stopped short of our gate to make a special announcement. We have a passenger on board who deserves our honor and respect. His name is private XXXXX, a soldier who recently lost his life. Private XXXXX is under your feet in the cargo hold. Escorting him today is Army Sergeant XXXXX. Also, on board are his father, mother, wife, and daughter. Your entire flight crew is asking for all passengers to remain in their seats to allow the family to exit the aircraft first. Thank you.'

We continued the turn to the gate, came to a stop and started our shutdown procedures. A couple of minutes later I opened the cockpit door. I found the two forward flight attendants crying, something you just do not see. I was told that after we came to a stop, every passenger on the aircraft stayed in their seats, waiting for the family to exit the aircraft. When the family got up and gathered their things, a passenger slowly started to clap his hands. Moments later more passengers joined in and soon the entire aircraft was clapping. Words of 'God Bless You', I'm sorry, thank you, be proud, and other kind words were uttered to the family as they made their way down the aisle and out of the airplane. They were escorted down to the ramp to finally be with their loved one. Many of the passengers disembarking thanked me for the announcement I had made. They were just words, I told them, I could say them over and over again, but nothing I say will bring back that brave soldier.

I respectfully ask that all of you reflect on this event and the sacrifices that millions of our men and women have made to ensure our freedom and safety in these United States of America....."

Many of us don't ever realize the sacrifice that military families endure to protect our right to free speech, freedom of religion, right to bear arms, etc. We must not forget that we have these rights because of these brave sons, daughters, mothers and fathers that sacrifice so much for us. With what is going on these days with the recent intimidations at town hall meetings, etc., we need to honor these soldiers of freedom by respectfully and peaceably speaking our minds and letting our Congressperson know how we feel. They've done so much for us, it's the least we can do for them.

Obama Care & the Truth

2009-07-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

I have been struggling with the whole Universal Health Care thing. Not because I in any way think we should back the House/President's plan, but because I am not sure of the best way to present a point/counterpoint to the various components that make up the bill.

I figured if I started writing, it would come to me, so here it goes....

Riddle me this....If this plan is so good, then why did every single House Democrat vote against Rep. Dean Heller's (R-NV) amendment that would have required all Congressmen to dump their gold health plan and participate in the proposed government run plan yesterday?

The thing I think I despise the most is the way the MSM (mainstream media) continues to give Obama a pass on the plan. They refuse to ask tough questions and refuse to question his statements, even though he contradicts himself and the truth is readily available.

In 2003, he is on record stating he is for a single payer system. In the 2008 primaries, in a debate, he stated he was not in favor of a single payer system. Now he is pushing a single payer system.

He states the bill is deficit and spending neutral, yet his own Congressional Budget Office, run by a Democrat, says it is not. Not even close. The CBO says it will add something like $611 billion over 10 years.

http://news.morningstar.com/newsnet/ViewNews.aspx?article=/DJ/200907161541DOWJONESDJONLINE000947_univ.xml

I keep hearing people say that they are OK with the government paying for health care. WAKE UP, People! Who do you think the "government" is? Anytime you hear that, just replace "government" with "taxpayer".

Do we really want a government that has so effectively run Medicare, Medicaid and the VA to run our entire health care system? Estimates are that one in ever four Medicare dollars spent is fraudulent.

http://www.taf.org/FCA-2006report.pdf

Come on people. Is this really a good idea? There is an estimated 40 million Americans without health insurance. Of those, about 10 million have voluntarily "opted out" of employer provided coverage. Another 10 million are illegal aliens (which the new plan would cover, by the way). That leaves 20 million uninsured. Wouldn't it reason that instead of changing the entire playing field, that we just address the 20 million people that are involuntarily uninsured?

And remember, uninsured does not mean they do not have access to heath care. Any of those people can walk into an emergency room anywhere in the US and receive treatment. Many, if not most, of them, qualify for Medicaid or Medicare already.

So far, I've focused on the expense of the overhaul. What about the privacy issues? The abortion rights folks have successfully argued to the Supreme Court that there is a "right" to privacy and choice when it comes to a woman's body. Does that mean that "right" only applies to abortions? I want the right to keep my medical files private. This bill puts my electronic files in a huge national database. Not very private.

I also want the right to choose how I treat my ailments, what kind of elective surgeries I have, and which doctors I use. Sorry folks, not in this bill. There will be an 18 person government commission, appointed by the President, that will decide those issues.

I haven't read the entire bill, but intend to. I only got about 400 pages into it so far. There is a searchable copy of it on www.opencongress.org. Look for HB 3200.

Read it yourself. It is astonishing the amount of money they want to spend and the amount of control they want to take from us. Please, do your homework. Call your Congressman and help stop this montrosity.

And Now, For My Next Act....

2009-07-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Watch me make voters appear out of thin air!

In June, the US Department of Justice barred the State of Georgia from implementing its voter ID program. The program, which was developed jointly with the Justice Department (as a result of the Voter's Rights Act of 1965, which required certain southern states to make changes to their voting laws only with the approval of DoJ) to allow voting precincts and the Secretary of State office to verify voter identity and citizenship in order to have a vote counted.

http://tinyurl.com/mdfjgn

Note I said "in order to have a vote counted". People without proper ID were allowed to cast a provisional ballot, but were required to provide proof of citizenship within a certain time frame in order to have their vote counted. In the 2008 presidential elections, over half of the people who cast "challenged" ballots never came back with or provided proof of citizenship.

Not a single person is on record having said they were denied access to voting because of the Voter ID law in the 2008 elections in Georgia.

Prior to the election, DoJ and two separate federal judges mandated that Georgia implement their new Voter ID law - that DoJ lawyers helped craft. The Obama administration's Justice Department, under Eric Holder, subsequently felt like the law was discriminatory and would hinder minority voters, so they issued a "denial of pre-clearance", that effectively killed the law - even though Georgia had record turnout in hispanic and black voters in the 2008 election.

“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy", said Secretary of State Karen Handel.

So, I wonder if other red states have had similar occurrences. Is Georgia being punished for voting for McCain? One thing for sure, is that leading up to the congressional elections of 2010, you can bet that ACORN, or now Community Organizers International (COI),

http://tinyurl.com/l7r9j7

will be spreading out across Georgia, filling out and submitting bogus voter registrations, just like they did across the country leading up to the 2008 elections. ACORN is now under federal indictments in 25 states.

http://tinyurl.com/njk5yl

Georgia and other red states must make a stand and not let ACORN, COI or whatever they may change their name to by 2010 make a mockery of the right of Americans to vote in a fair election.

We may not get very far with a Democrat-controlled congress, but there is an online petition going around to request that the Senate Minority Leader, John Boehner, initiate an investigation of ACORN and stop all federal funding to the organization until such a time the investigation is concluded. I urge you all to sign or to at least call you own congressman or congresswoman and ask them to support an investigation.

http://tinyurl.com/4ljrm8

In June, it was Georgia. Who's next?

My Week on the USS John C, Stennis

2009-07-10T14:03:00.001-07:00

If you follow my posts, you know that this past week, I was invited to spend a few days on the nuclear aircraft carrier John C. Stennis. The cruise was what is referred to as a "Tiger Cruise", on which crew members are allowed to invite friends or family aboard for several days. Our cruise was from San Diego to Bremerton, Washington, the end and homecoming of the Stennis' 6 month deployment to the western Pacific.

We boarded in San Diego, only to find out that the air wing had departed the day before. One of my dreams is to ride shotgun in a military jet, and I had secretly hoped to convince one of the pilots to take me up. So much for that dream, at least for now.

While seeing the airwing in action would have been great, the experience was unbelievable. We were able to tour just about every space on the ship, except the reactor/engine room. We toured the mess decks, the armory, one of the ship's magazines, the (jet) engine repair shop, the command defense & control center, the bridge. The one thing that shone through at every location was the professionalism, enthusiasm and level of training these young men & women had.

The average age of the sailors on the ship is 20 years old. This week, I met some of the most together, intelligent and enthusiastic young men & women I have ever met. Each individual I spoke to had in-depth knowledge of their department or particular responsibility. Everyone I met was polite & helpful, many dropping what they were doing to show me the way to wherever I was trying to get on this massive ship.

I do not know if it is like this on all Navy vessels, but on this one, the crew obviously had a great deal of "team pride" and respect for their commanders. Many sailors take college-level classes while underway. We witnessed an awards ceremony at which several sailors received college degrees while at sea. One chief received two associates degrees, and another young lady received her BS in Psychology. The leadership team really pushed education.

However, as intriguing and informative as my many tours were while on board the Stennis, one of the most touching things I witnessed was on the passage in to Bremerton. We awoke at 0515, had breakfast, and proceeded to Vultures Row, one of the balconies on the island overlooking the flight deck. Sailors in dress whites were lining the deck. The passage in is very narrow, and there are homes and roads lining both sides. At 0600, there were people in pajamas on their decks and porches and even pulled over along the road, waving the American flag, cheering, whistling and a few even shooting fireworks as the Stennis passed. I thought that I was one of the few patriotic Americans left in the US. I am humbly mistaken. I know all of these people had things to do early on a Friday morning. Yet, they took the time to honor these returning sailors. While my camera wasn't good enough to capture much of the event, it was clear to the naked eye. These sailors, men and woman, black, white and asian, all stood at attention as their ship expertly sailed past on its way home. You could see the pride in their eyes, as well as their anticipation that soon they would be reunited with their loved ones after 6 months at sea.

I will forever more take time out of my day to honor soldiers and sailors on their way home, or their way to deployment. They deserve our support, thanks, and gratitude. Like I said in my previous post, should we have to engage the enemy, the awesome power of this weapon is in very capable hands. May the fear it strikes in enemies worldwide be enough to deter aggression against the United States. And if not, I am confident that the crew of the USS John Stennis is up to the task.

My Week Celebrating Independence

2009-07-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

I can not think of a better way to celebrate our Nation's independence that how I will this coming week. My brother, a Navy commander, has invited me and our oldest brother to join him for 4 days on the nuclear aircraft carrier John C. Stennis. What a better tribute to our Nation's independence that spending it with the young men and women that fight for our freedom daily.

http://www.cvn74.navy.mil/home.html

The Stennis is an Improved Nimitz Class nuclear powered aircraft carrier. The ship displaces 81,000 tons, 91,500 fully loaded. It is 1,092 feet long with a 134-ft beam (the flight deck is 275 feet wide). It drafts almost 37 feet, making it unable to traverse the Panama Canal. From the keel to the top of the mast, it is as tall as a 24-story building. It has its own water distillation plant that provides 400,000 gallons per day - enough to serve 2000 homes.

It's flight wing is made up of 87 aircraft, and its power plant generates 194,000kW of power. It's top speed is classified, but is listed as +31 knots, which is about 35 miles per hour. The Stennis was commissioned in 1995 and is home to 5,750 brave men and women.

I am not sure what my internet access will be on board, but hopefully I'll be able to reach my blog to provide updates and photos of what life on a carrier is like.

One of my friends wanted a Peace sign bumper sticker. Her husband (a Naval aviator) said no until she came home with one of a B-52 bomber that said around the border "Peace Through Superior Firepower". He had to agree to that one. I'm not sure who came up with the saying, but with what is going on in the world these days, I'm sure glad we're still the one carrying the biggest stick.

Cap & Trade - Part 2

2009-07-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

Now that I've had a little time to do what none of the US House of Representatives did - read the Waxman-Markey Global Warming Bill - I can fill you all in on one of the tidbits I've found....

They call it REEP - Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance. If you sell your house, you will be required, before to sell it, to retrofit your home to meet any federal green guidelines drawn up by some government bureaucrat. The bill says says, "The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences … The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States." Details? There are none. The EPA gets to set those later. Payment? Not very clear....you know what that means....YOU will pay for it.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50365

The bottom line is that when you decide to sell your home, part of the closing process will be to provide some sort of certificate saying your home is compliant with green guidelines some bureaucrat at the EPA or Department of Energy came up with. For example, does your home have roofing materials that reflect solar energy? That will be a requirement if you want to sell your home under green guidelines. That means that you as a homeowner will have to put a new roof on your home before you can sell it, and not just a new roof but one that reflects solar rays. Double-pane windows? Enough attic insulation? Compact fluorescent light bulbs? How much is all of this compliance going to cost you when you try to sell your home?

Is this going to do anything at all to reduce global warming? According to the US Energy Information Administration (we have one of those??) "If we were to retrofit 3 million homes over the next decade, we would only consume 10 days less petroleum (.27% less). If we were to retrofit 10 times as many homes, 30 million, (which is almost certainly not possible to do in 10 years), we would save just 100 days of oil over a 10 year period (2.7% less)."

http://www.thebreakthrough.org/blog/2009/04/what_can_building_retrofits_ac.shtml

SO, causing homeowners to spend thousands of dollars to "energy upgrade" their homes will save a total of 10 extra barrels of oil per year. Hey, I wonder if we can use PresBo's "saved or created" math on this one, too?

Why in the world would this be in a global warming bill? I think I found it in section 338 of the bill. Section 338 says that if you apply for energy grants for your home, the upgrades must be built by laborers that were paid at least the local prevailing wage. For those of you not familiar with the term "prevailing wage", that means "Union" in political speak. Now it all is becoming clear. This is a provision in the bill to pander to the Unions.

It all comes full circle, doesn't it?

How much longer will we put us with this crap. Our Nation is being hijacked. A local Atlanta talk show host put it best: "Congress is just like a burglar...they try to rob you blind before you wake up."

Some content from Neal Boortz' "Boortz Blast".

Cap and Trade - What it Really Means to We the People

2009-06-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

The big news today is that the House of Representatives is voting on the Waxman-Markey Global Warming Bill. On the surface, it sounds like a good idea, right? Cut down on pollution; save the environment. What We the People are not hearing, or at least maybe not listening, is that this bill will be the largest tax bill EVER passed in the history of these United States.

This bill will cost the average American family (can you say "you and me") over $1200 per year for the first 10 years of the bill, rising to $4600 ($6800, by some estimates) per year after 2035. In addition to the tax increase, this monstrosity of a bill would cause unemployment to increase by over 2 million jobs just by 2012.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm2504.cfm

PresBo's administration and the EPA have a different story for you. Their estimate is on $140 per family per year. Their numbers are developed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and are based on strictly changes in consumption by consumers as a result of the higher cost of gods, service and energy. The CBO doesn't include the decrease in GDP as a result of the bill, which would be $161 billion (in 2009 dollars). Decrease in GDP = Jobs Lost.

http://www.heritage.org/Press/FactSheet/fs0034.cfm

So, higher taxes. Higher cost of goods. Higher energy costs. Loss of jobs. Industry and jobs leaving the US to go to a more friendly business environment. Hmmm. Not looking so good anymore.

If all of this was not enough, the science on which the bill is based is at best, a guess as to what MIGHT happen, based on various models. At worst it is just another case of statisticians manipulating numbers to arrive at a desired outcome.

CO2, which is the primary "greenhouse gas" that the bill is designed to limit, makes up less than 2 percent of total greenhouse gas, with water vapor being the single larges component, at over 97%. Of the 2% CO2 piece, only about 5% of the 2% comes from man-made sources.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

While it is generally a good plan to take care of our planet, the massive economic effect of a bill like this so far outweighs impact of "human-caused" CO2, that it is, plainly, ridiculous.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Now is the time for action. We all need to contact our Representatives (who are voting on this bill today!) and our Senators (who will vote on this bill if it passes the House). Tell them you DO NOT WANT THEM TO VOTE FOR WAXMAN-MARKEY! Find your representatives and senators here:

http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup

Email them. Call them. Tell them you will vote against them if they do not properly represent you in Washington.

This Bill is the single largest tax bill and economy killer ever brought to the floor of the House of Representatives. Please take a few minutes out of your busy day to help stop the insanity.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/tst062309a.cfm

Is this the HOPE that Obama was talking about?

2009-06-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

Let's hear it for PresBO's transparency and accountability in government! I believe the promise was "a new kind of politics" and "not the same old partisan politics". Well, can I hear a "Practice what you preach!" from the crowd?

Let me introduce you to federal Inspector General George Walphin. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Inspector Walphin has been the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service since 2007. His agency oversees federally subsidized volunteer programs such as AmeriCorps. In 2008, the Corporation asked Mr. Walphin to investigate "irregularities" at St. HOPE, a California non-profit run by former NBA star Kevin Johnson, now the mayor of Sacramento, and a big Obama supporter during the campaign for president. St. HOPE had received a federal grant of $850,000, which was supposed to be used for tutoring area students, redevelopment of several buildings and to support theater and arts program.

Mr. Walphin found that the money had been used instead to pad staff salaries, donate to local school board candidates campaigns, and to pay AmeriCorps members to perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, like washing his car.

This past May, Mr. Walphin's office recommended that Kevin Johnson and several others, including the St. HOPE charity, be suspended from receiving any additional federal funding. A civil and criminal referral was also sent to the US Attorney for the Eastern District of California.

When Johnson was elected mayor, a city attorney suggested that Sacramento might be barred from federal stimulus dollars because of Mr. Johnson's suspension. This caused an uproar, and the US Attorney decided not to pursue criminal charges and political pressure mounted to lift the suspension. Mr. Walphin objected, and pursued Mr. Johnson to pay the money back. The response from the US Attorney was to cut off all communication with Mr. Walphin, choosing to communicate directly with the Corporation board, which is now chaired by one of PresBO's top campaign fundraisers, Alan Solomont.

Follow me now....it's getting interesting.....

A few days later, the US Attorney's office produce a watered down settlement document that significantly reduced the repayment provisions and cleared Mr. Johnson of any wrongdoing.

Concerned that taxpayer dollars were being abused, Mr. Walphin wrote a 29-page report, co-signed by two other investigators, and submitted it to Congress. Last Wednesday, Mr. Walphin received a call from a White House attorney, Mr. Norman Eisen, telling him to resign within the hour or be fired.

Mr. Eisen says that it was "pure coincidence" that Mr. Walphin was asked to leave during the St. HOPE controversy, which the White House has since recanted.

The problem with Mr. Eisen's call is, last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which requires the President to give 30 days notice to Congress, plus a reason, before firing any inspector general. One of the co-sponsors of that bill? Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

So now the White House lawyers are saying that US Attorney Brown had lodged a complaint of misconduct against Mr. Walphin, and accused Walphin of "not really having the goods" on Mr. Johnson.

The problem with Mr. Brown's statement, is that his office, under his direction, settled with St. HOPE and Mr. Johnson in an agreement that required that Johnson pay back about half of the $850,000, and take a course on bookkeeping.

If there were "no goods" on St. HOPE and Kevin Johnson, why was a settlement necessary?

PresBO promised to carefully watch how every stimulus dollar was spent. And this is how he shows how it's done.

"A new kind of politics" and "not the same old partisan politics" my ass.

Voter Imposed Term Limits Update

2009-06-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

This letter was posted on Glenn Beck's website. It is an open letter to our "leaders", and I use that term loosely. This gentleman has expressed many of my thoughts as well as I could have.

I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?

Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.

Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.

Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.

Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.

Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.

Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ‑‑ what do you have against shareholders making a profit?

Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.

Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band‑Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ‑‑ please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.

Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.

From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.

We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when he will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

Universal Health Care - Heaven Help us

2009-06-13T18:22:00.000-07:00

You ask people you know if they think the government should provide health care for us. An alarming number of them say yes without skipping a beat. But once you start to question them a little about what exactly they are willing to give up for "government" health care, their story starts to change. Why would we want a system like England's, which has the worst cancer survival rate in the EU? In a system like theirs, elderly people are "cheaper when dead", so decisions are made not by doctors, but by bureaucrats and accountants. Is that really who you want managing your care?

Why is it that health insurance is not allowed to discriminate between behavioral choices of the people it covers? Car insurance is more expensive if you have speeding tickets or continuously wreck your car. Homeowners insurance premiums are based on your location, whether you have smoke detectors, etc. Medical insurance, however, sets no similar limits on behavioral choices.

Smoke? History of heart disease in the family? Obese? Diabetes? We all pay the same rate. The only difference is whether you are a family or an individual. Why has the government regulated health insurance so that the insurance companies are not allowed to price coverage based on peoples personal behavioral choices?

If health insurance was like auto insurance, those of us in good health with no vices would get a lower premium. Those that continue to do things that cause health issues would pay more.

You better believe that any universal health program proposed by the government will not have any limits on behavioral choices. What we'll ed up with is that those responsible (i.e.: paying the taxes that fund the program) will have no authority over the irresponsibility of others.

In anticipation of a universal health care program, many top US doctors and surgeons are already getting their certifications and licenses to practice in other countries. They will either move abroad, or at least practice abroad. They'll take their patients with them.

Currently, people from other countries come to the US for medical procedures - because we have good doctors and because the want to see our country. This is referred to as medical or surgical tourism.

As more doctors flee a government controlled system, the medical tourism will shift and other countries, like Barbados, will become the new hot spots. Celebrities and other wealthy people are already doing it.

We have become a society in which when people want something, they think they "need" it. Once we believe we "need" it, we thing we are entitled to it.

Health care is not a right. It can be found no where in the US Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. In the coming months, you'll hear the Dems say that there are 60 million people in the US without health care. Baloney! There are less than 16 million! What happens when those 16 million go to the hospital? They get taken care of. Either through medicare or medicaid, or as indigents. Hospitals are not allowed to turn people away. While the 16 million do not have health insurance, they are certainly not without health care. Our government has made sure of that.

Nationalized health care will result in the US following suit with other countries, with rising death rates from many common afflictions that are treatable and survivable here, for now, anyway.

Obama's Magical Job Creation Show!

2009-06-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

Last Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly job report showing that the economy lost 345,000 jobs in May. This brings the total number of jobs lost in the first full three months since the economic stimulus package was passed to 1.5 million jobs. In order to divert media and constituent attention from these inconvenient facts, PresBO this week unveiled his new “accelerated” “roadmap to recovery”, which will supposedly “save or create” another 600,000 jobs.

Officially, the Obama administration claims their stimulus plan has already “saved or created” 150,000 jobs, but even that number is fuzzy: This Sunday on CNN, Obama adviser David Axelrod claimed the stimulus “has produced hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

PresBO’s own party is starting to question the integrity of the Obama administration’s job claims. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) said recently in a hearing with the Administrations Treasury Secretary:

“You created a situation where you cannot be wrong. If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would’ve lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You’ve given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.”

How much longer will the mainstream media (MSM) let this go on before someone “man’s-up” and calls him to the carpet on the whole “saved or created” jobs farce? What real metric can We The People use to really evaluate the effectiveness of the stimulus?

By matching the Obama administration’s past promises to past Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the real story becomes clear. When Obama first unveiled his stimulus plan in November 2008, he claimed it would create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. At that time BLS reported that U.S. economy employed about 136.1 million jobs. By January that number fell to 134.6 million jobs. Then miraculously, and without any basis or questioning by the MSM, the Obama administration upped the job creation of the stimulus to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010.

You do the math: 136.1 million plus 2.5 million equals 138.6 million; and 134.6 million plus 4 million equals 138.6 million. The end result? The Obama administration held the jobs accountability number at 138.6 million! Talk about fuzzy math!

So how is PresBO doing through May of 2009? The BLS reports the economy currently employs 132.2 million people. For PresBO to meet his promise to We The People, between now and the end of 2010, the U.S.economy will have to create 6.4 million jobs. I expect in the very near future that Obama the Magnificent will magically produce a new number of jobs the stimulus will “create or save” that will maintain the bar at 138.6 million jobs, no matter what the BLS says job losses are.

Clearly, skeptics will ask how he plans to accomplish this. Well, news this week is that a second stimulus plan is on the way! How very convenient a way for PresBO to justify the additional 2 million jobs he’ll need to be able to meet his 138.6 million number.

Are we all really this dense, People?

Excerpts provided by www.heritage.org

Introducing Government Motors (GM)

2009-06-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

Where to start? So much has happened in national and international politics and new since my last post.

We now have Government Motors (GM). PresBO (President Barack Obama) says the government will get in, stabilize things, and get out....kind of like they did with AMTRAK? Notice we no longer have a choice in passenger rail travel in the US. The US government stepped in and bailed out AMTRAK in 1971. All common stock is owned by the US government, and the President appoints the Board of Directors. Sound familiar? AMTRAK remains heavily government subsidized to this day, and the price is set so low that any competition for service is impossible.

If the government follows this model, within a few years, GM cars (the cars the Democrats want us to drive) will be priced so low, and so heavily subsidized, that GM could drive the rest of the car competition out of the industry.

PresBO says he has no interest in running GM, but he has already fired the CEO, appointed several new directors to the board, and, after GM wanted to leave downtown Detroit for less expensive office space in nearby Warren, Michigan, called the mayor of Detroit and assured him GM was not moving. That's an awful lot of involvement for someone who has no interest in running the company.

Don't even get me started on how the GM bail-out goes against US bankruptcy law. In a typical (and legally established precedenced) bankruptcy, creditors holding secured debts (corporate bonds) are at the front of the line to be paid. With the GM bail-out, the unions, who's debt (pension plans) is unsecured, went to the front of the line. Common stock shareholders (those who haven't already dumped their shares prior to the low of $0.27/share) will likely get nothing at all.

PresBO and the Dems make it a daily habit of demonizing the bondholders (those secured debtors...you know, the ones who invested large sums of money and were assured their investments were absolutely safe, because even if GM went under, their debt was secured...they'd be first in line!). What they don't talk about is that most of the "little people" they claim to protect are private shareholders in funds that own those bonds.

I do believe one of our biggest problems is the dumb masses that are too lazy (or dumb) to educate themselves and form their own opinions. They believe everything they see on TV or read in the paper, and never research or read beyond the headlines. I truly believe that if people would educate themselves, there would already be an social uprising against what is happening in our Country.

The logic just doesn't add up! On one hand, PresBO and the Dems say they want to loosen lending to spur the economy, and on the other hand, cast aside secured debtors, who relied on legal precedence to evaluate the risk to their money and lend it to GM. Do the Dems not think that future lending decisions will become tougher if those with the money know that the US government doesn't really consider their secured debt secure anymore?

Well, as the AMTRAK train speeds past my office window, I know that at least US passenger rail service will be there for me if I ever want to go for a train ride.

Guide to Selecting A Supreme Court Justice

2009-05-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

What should we be looking for in a US Supreme Court Justice? Do we want compassion? The ability to put oneself into someone else's shoes? The ability to evaluate both sides of the debate and pick the side you most agree with. No, no and no. The ONLY thing we should want in a Justice is the ability to impartially interpret the laws of the United States in reference to the Constitution of the United States.

We do NOT want Justices that legislate from the bench. We do NOT want Justices that cater to the left or the right. It is not their job to decide who is right or wrong or who is more deserving, but to evaluate the issue as it relates to the US Constitution, determine if the underlying laws that are being applied are first constitutional, and second, being implemented as intended.

I do not know much about President Obama's pick, Sonia Sotomayor, to replace Justice Souter, but I'm sure we will all become more familiar with her in the next few weeks. I hope that the Republicans mean what they say when they say they'll give her an up or down vote. I also hope they will thoroughly vett her and her stance on the issues before they let a vote come to the floor.

The coming days will be a good lesson in civics. Sit back and watch!

A day for the "Other Stuff"

2009-05-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

Today is Mother's Day, and presents me a chance to blog about the "other stuff" in my life and my blog title. Mother's Day is a special day in my family.

A better name for it may be "Women Who Are My Heroes" day, or "Women Who Inspire Me" day, because the women in my life that fit the Mother category have and continue to do both.

My wife is a talented and strong woman. She is an artist, a psychologist, a mentor, a friend. She is always there for me and our kids to listen and offer advice, encouragement and companionship. Her artistic talent is beyond compare. And after 22 years of marriage, our sparks are still glowing hot. She stays busy painting, raising our kids, putting up with me, yet always has time for her family. She sticks with me through thick and thin. I don't know how she does it, but I thank my lucky stars every day that she is mine.

My mother is a strong, spiritual woman. While we don't get to see her as often as we'd like, each time is like we've only been apart for moments. Mom is a doula, sort of like a midwife, and has delivered or been involved with the delivery of something like 100 babies in the last 10 years. She kayaks, bikes, travels, and has made some truly remarkable impressions on her grandchildren by taking them on world travels with her. She enjoys life (as we all hope we can when we get into our golden years).

Each time I draw on either of these women for inspiration or strength (whether they know I an drawing on them or not), they do not let me down. So today, I thank the woman who brought me into the world, and the woman who has helped me navigate it for all of my adult life.

Mom, you sculpted and molded me for the first 23 years of my life. You handed me off to a an equally capable and loving woman who has helped guide me through the next 22 years. For this I thank and love you both.

Waterboarding: Hipocrasy of the Left

2009-05-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

Who knew what, when? That seems to be the question of the week in Washington, DC. Rather than Democratic Congresspersons owning up to their actions, they have resorted to the old tactic of denying their own involvement and blaming the Bush administration.

On September 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA gave a classified briefing to then Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Porter Goss, and the ranking Democratic member of the same committee, Nancy Pelosi.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/05/intelligence-re.html

The meeting is described as a “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed” (Emphasis added). Zubaydah was a terrorist detained for the planning and possible attacks on the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sometime after then, Ms. Pelosi was interviewed for Time magazine, and was quoted as saying "He (Zubaydah) is very skilled at avoiding interrogation" and "He is an agent of disinformation". These are the precise reason the CIA resorted to the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs).

Now Pelosi is claiming "We were not - I repeat - were not told that water boarding, or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

OK now, Nancy, who are we to believe? You, in your interviews prior to the Democrats needing another "wag the dog" diversion? The CIA meeting minutes?

Porter Goss, who went on to be the CIA director, recalls it slightly differently, Madam Speaker. Mr. Goss has stated "We were briefed, and we certainly understood what the CIA was doing." adding that "Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough."

In addition to the Time interview and the memos recently released by Leon Paneta, the current CIA Director, there is a chronology of over 40 CIA briefings to Congressional Members compiled by CIA and released this week.

Let's put aside the whole Bush-bashing probe for a moment and turn to the related issue of the release of alleged "torture" photographs from Guantanamo and elsewhere. What possible gain can the Dems get from this? When the US released photos from Ubu Grhaib, the result was Muslim outrage, and the use of the photos to rally insurgents, recruit insurgents and place US military lives at stake.

Why does anyone think that the releasing these photos will not result in the same? Does Congress not think about what the potential unintended consequences will be. Are they really that stupid?

No. They are not. Liberals have a record of unmitigated legislative disasters (the latest being what's going on in our economy). Before 1994, the Dems had virtually unbroken power in Congress for sixty years. Explain to me how a group of people, supposedly smart people, who study issues for years with almost unlimited resources, can not come up with a policy or platform that works? Are they chronically incapable - all of them? For 60 years?

One of two things must be true: Either the Dems (again - 60 years worth of them) are idiots who continue to pursue destructive policies after decades of contrary evidence, or they fully understand the the consequences of their actions, and somehow, they are benefiting from them. Is it votes? Staying in power at all costs? I suggest you all read the following article (from which I've borrowed a few phrases above).

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

The writer hypothesizes that this is a long-term, deliberate strategy of the Left to control and change the fabric of the United States forever. But that is a blog for another day.

How's That Hope and Change Working For You?

2009-05-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, it was reported that millions of US taxpayers who had received President Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit will have to pay it back.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/INSIDE-WASHINGTON-Rude-apf-15091434.html?.v=1

The tax credit was supposed to provide up to $400 to individuals and $800 to married couples as part of the massive economic recovery package enacted in February. Most workers started receiving the credit through small increases in their paychecks in the past month (see my February 16th post).

But new tax withholding tables issued by the IRS could cause millions of taxpayers to get hundreds of dollars more than they are entitled to under the credit, money that will have to be repaid at tax time.

Taxpayers who calculate their withholding so they get only small refunds could face an unwelcome tax bill next April.

Obama has touted the tax credit as one of the big achievements of his first 100 days in office, boasting that 95 percent of working families will qualify in 2009 and 2010.

The tax credit was designed to help boost the economy by getting more money to consumers in their regular paychecks. Employers were required to start using the new withholding tables by April 1.

But, one has to wonder if Obama knew the tax tables were changing, and structured the tax credit in such a way that he really wasn't giving anything away, but he was buying votes because voters are, sorry to say, generally ignorant.

Obama's Covert Assault on The 2nd Amendment

2009-05-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

President Obama is attempting to perform a proverbial "end-around" on the 2nd Amendment, which guarantees US citizens the right to keep and bear arms. On his recent trip to Mexico, he announced he was going to renew an effort by Bill Clinton to get Congress to ratify the CIFTA treaty, which will allow the regulation and registration of small arms owned by American citizens. Obama, in a press conference, said, "ratifying CIFTA will curb small arms trafficing" to Mexico and help with their effort against the drug trade.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/05/01/ldt.tucker.gun.rights.cnn?iref=24hours

Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1997, but failed to get Congress to ratify the treaty, specifically because it is in direct conflict with the United States Constitution's 2nd Amendment.

CIFTA would require an international gun registration system, would provide US gun owner ID to foreigh countries, and would allow the foreign countries to extradite US citizens to try them for treaty violations.

Obama is presenting this not as gun control legislation, but as an international treaty that has been signed by 27 other countries, so it must be the right thing to sign it, right? Wrong. None of those other countries have a 2nd Amendment.

So basically, Congress will be asked to approve the US population be regulated because of other countries inability to have a peaceful and orderly society.

The Obama administration has said they want to do a few things with the guns laws....like take them away. (that last part was added for emphasis).

Call, email or write your congressman...especially Senator Richard Lugar, who is supporting the ratifying of this treaty....and tell them to vote NO on ratifying CIFTA.

2009-04-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

For this week's blog, I am turning to what I call "Funny, but True: Humor in History". As old as some of these sayings are, it is uncanny how they still ring true. There has been so much stressful news in the last several months, that I though it was time for a little humor. Following is a compilation (by others..) of humorous but very truthful sayings going back in time to the birth or our great Nation....enjoy!

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress. -- John Adams

If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. -- Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. -- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat, Frenc h Economist (1801-1850)

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. -- Ronald Reagan (1986)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. -- Will Rogers

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free! -- P.J. O'Rourke

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. -- Voltaire (1764)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! -- Pericles (430 B.C.)

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. -- Thomas Jefferson

Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it. -- Anonymous

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. -- Ronald Reagan

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

There is no distinctly native American criminal class...save Congress. -- Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. -- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. -- Thomas Jefferson

The biggest difference between Republicans and Democrats is the spelling. -- Anonymous

If anyone has a few more nuggets of wisdom they'd like to share, post them as comments below. Thanks,

Thought Police - Part 2

2009-04-16T18:40:00.001-07:00

Ok, you all thought I was being paranoid when I blogged about the Missouri State Police's guidance document on homegrown terrorists/militia and identifying them through their bumper stickers, such as third party candidates (like Ron Paul), anti-abortion, pro-gun, etc.

We'll the Department of Homeland Security couldn't just stand there and be out done. The DHS published a report last week that went even further. The report:

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/video/extremismreport.pdf

states Right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning," the assessment reads. "The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.," it continues.

"Proposed imposition of firearms restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of right-wing extremist groups ... The high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by right-wing extremists in anticipation of restrictions and bans in some parts of the country continue to be a primary concern to law enforcement," the report says.

Judge Anthony Napolitano, a Fox New contributor, wrote an assessment of the report, which can be found at http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/04/15/napolitano_homeland_security/.

To summarize his findings from his review of the report, he lists:

It is drafted with a prejudice against anyone who criticizes the role of the federal government in our lives today.
It cautions the reader that the document is “not to be released to the public, the media, or other personnel who do not have a valid need-to-know without prior approval” of the DHS.
This document runs directly counter to numerous U.S. Supreme decisions prohibiting the government from engaging in any activities that could serve to chill the exercise of expressive liberties. Liberties are chilled, in constitutional parlance, when people are afraid to express themselves for fear of government omnipresence, monitoring, or reprisals.
The writers of this abominable report are particularly concerned with the expression of opinions that might be used to fuel ideas that challenge federal authority or favor state and local government over the federal government.
It identified as potential terrorist threats people who collect guns, veterans, supporters of border control, and pro-life advocates.

Hopefully, any of you reading this at this point are saying to your selves, "Holy Sh*#!". If not, you should be. At least not all of the federal government is not embracing the report.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi (D), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that he was "dumbfounded" such a report would be issued.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/15/top-dem-dumbfounded-extremism-report/

"This report appears to raise significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans -- including war veterans," Mr. Thompson said in the letter sent Tuesday.

Ms. Napolitano issued a statement standing by the report, which she said she personally had reviewed before it was issued.

I ask you all to reflect back to one of my first posts about the Cloward-Pivens Strategy. Do you remember doing connect the dots puzzles when you were kids? When you started, the page was a big jumble of dots on a page, as you started to connect them, the picture started to appear, getting clearer as more dots get connected.

The dots are getting connected and the picture is coming into focus.

Tea Parties Nationwide - Part 2

2009-04-15T18:44:00.000-07:00

I feel it's my civic duty to blog a little about the over 300 anti-tax tea parties going on right now across the country. As I sit here blogging, I'm watching over 15,000 people in Atlanta protest our ever-growing government, unfettered spending and continued dismantlement of our Constitutional rights.

We The People really don't want anything but to have our politicians live by the same rules we all have to live by: Live within your means/your budget; pensions based on length of service; health care similar to what the rest of us have to purchase; and yes, a tax code that doesn't drain billions of dollars from our economy just in compliance costs..not including the taxes themselves!

I have been a proponent for several years of the FairTax. This is a proposed national sales tax of 23% on all goods and services. The principal is that there is already embedded taxes (social security, unemployment, etc.) of 23% on everything we buy...think about it this way. If a manufacturer wants to make a $20 profit on every widget he sells (at a price of $100 for easy math), and has to pay $23 in taxes for each unit produced, is he going to increase the cost of the item so he still makes his $20, or is he going to absorb that $23, and make less per unit. He's going to raise the price and maintain his profit level.

With the FairTax, there would be no embedded tax, so that same $100 widget would cost $77. Add the 23% FairTax back in....the widget still costs $100.

The upside to this? The FairTax would get rid of unemployment, social security, income, excise, inheritance taxes. In fact, the FairTax bill currently in Congress would abolish the IRS entirely. Tax collection and submittal would be handled by the state.

The bigger upside? Every illegal alien, tax dodger and tourist would become part of our country's tax base. All the loop holes would go away.

Why isn't Washington jumping all over this? Because it takes power away from politicians. Politicians could no longer offer tax relief, loop holes or credits to industries, in effect "selling" favor in exchange for jobs (read: votes) in their districts...helping them get re-elected.

Please visit www.FairTax.org. Sign the petition. Help organize. This is one of those ideas that is too good to let fail.

Global Warming!

2009-04-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

If this doesn't shoot a few holes in the "whole global warming is man-made" argument, I don't know what will.

Yahoo! News/TIME reported this morning that India's cattle population contributes more to greenhouse gas (GHG) production that all of the cars in India put together.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090411/wl_time/08599189064600

There are over 280 million cows, and over 480 million livestock in Indian (including goats & sheep) generating methane gas, which traps 20 times more heat than C02. The article says scientists are looking for a new diet for the livestock which will reduce their methane emissions. No mention on how the poor will be able to afford the new, scientifically developed, diet foods.

Elsewhere around the world, a university in Norway has determined that one moose produces more GHG than traveling 13000 kilometers in a car.

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=64452

The US EPA estimates that ruminant livestock produce over 80 million metric tons of methane annually. Using the 20X rule from the India study above, that would be the equivalent to 1.6 billion metric tons (80 million x 20) of C02. (is it getting warm in here, or is it just me?)

Just for comparison, the total energy-related C02 emissions, worldwide, are just over 28 billion metric tons.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/environment_faqs.asp#US_CO2

Based on the above, and the increasing global number of bovines, it looks to me that we have a looming crisis on our hands! As we move towards alternative energies (and I include nuclear here as the #1 viable "alternative"), the world population will continue to grow, and we'll need to produce more livestock to feed the masses. Before we know it, livestock will be the largest producer of greenhouse gas (actually, agriculture may already be) in the world. I can see the title of the next Al Gore book....An Inconvenient Food: How Cows are Destroying The Earth.

Man, I hope those Indian scientists are successful in developing that low-gas diet! For more on the REAL science of climate change, check out

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

Voter Imposed Term Limits

2009-04-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

I think we've come to the point in our County's history when it is time for us ordinary citizens to stand up for ourselves, our Constitution, and the American way of life! Our current system of government is flawed, in that once a politician gets into office, it is very hard to get them out. We could email, write and call our senators and representatives and ask that they vote in term limits, don't give themselves raises, forgo full retirement for serving one term in office and live with the same health care benefits we all have to..but we all know how well that has worked.

We'll since I'm not a millionaire, and my wife wouldn't let me run for office anyway, I've decided to do what I can to start a grass roots movement to "Vote Them All Out!" Good or bad, Republican or Democrat, no one serves more than one successive term. OK, maybe two 2-year terms for House of Representative, but one 6-year term is enough for a Senator. How else will Congress realize we mean business. This is NOT a democracy. It is a Republic. A representative government. It is our will they are supposed to implement. Not that of lobbyists. Not that of powerful left or right wing polital action committees. We, The People.

I'm not sure how I'll do it or whether I'll be successful, but every movement starts with a first step or a single thought. Stay tuned on what to do, where to go to read up, etc.

Obama's Global Economy & Governance

2009-04-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

This week, President Obama used the G-20 conference to begin his turnover of USA sovereignty. Obama has signed off on international legislation—the Financial Stability Board—that would regulate ALL firms, including those within the USA and places them under the responsibility of an international governmental agency.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), the pending international body’s legislation—which will of course override the US Constitution—states: “We agree to a framework of internationally agreed upon high standards. We will set up a financial stability board with a strengthened mandate to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets” —to endorse and implement tough new principles on paying compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of ALL firms.” The international community will now be able to determine the salaries and compensation of us all.

Also during the G20 conference, Obama officially announced the reduction in US nuclear weaponry, so that Iran will be more amenable to sitting down to talk with the US. In other words, he’s again announced to the world that the USA is no longer a threat to anyone—let alone terrorists. Never before in our history has the United States of America had a leader who has announced—in no uncertain terms—that it is his plan and duty to dismantle and destroy the country he represents. He, his administration members and his Congress (with extraordinary assistance from most notably Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd and their friends) have devastated the US economy, are in the process of eliminating the First and Second Amendments—and the entire US Constitution—have ended free enterprise, established his national youth indoctrination—if not police—force (via the GIVE—Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education—Act) and have begun the process of taking over virtually all private companies.

Also, in the news this week, is that we are no longer to refer to the "Global War on Terror" as such. The new name, according the the Obama Administration and our new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is the "Overseas Contingency Operation". Let's see...the "overseas" part helps do away with any connotation that we were attacked on US soil. "Contingency" leads one down the thought path that our forces are deployed "just in case"; with "operation" being the only slightly militaristic term in the new slogan.

What's next?

The First 100 Days - So Far

2009-04-04T04:44:00.000-07:00

There has been a flurry of activity amidst the Obama administration since January 20th, so much, that I thought it might be good to take a step back, take a deep breath, and see what our new President has accomplished in his first 75 days as the Most Powerful Man in the World.

Now mind you, he has not accomplished these things on his own. Our very own Congress has greased the skids every step of the way. So I want to be sure to give credit where credit is due. Much of the below was compiled by Sher Zieve, of Renew America, I've added my two cents.

Seized over $1 TRILLION in taxpayer funds from the US Treasury (in less than 2 months) for the so-called economic "stimulus package" and heavily- earmarked spending bills
Committees held and are continuing to hold "kangaroo trials" of bank executives in ongoing "investigative" hearings, in order to divert the blame for the US' economic disaster from the true culprits — which include but, are not limited to — Democrats Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, former President Clinton and Barack Obama
Feigned outrage and grilling of AIG's CEO on bonuses paid to his employees, while knowing full well that it was Senator Christopher Dodd, under direction of the Obama administration, who wrote the legislation to protect these bonuses. All while Dodd tries frantically to dance away from this as fast as he can
Nationalizing our financial industry by forcing banks to take TARP funds and not allowing them to return the money (see today's (4/4) WSJ)
Executive Branch control of the Commerce Department (which has traditionally been autonomous and controls the US Census Bureau) in order to Gerrymander districts so that Democrats will be in control nationwide
Assigning ACORN to work with the Commerce Department — again, the department that controls the US Census Bureau.
Cutting US Defense Funds and decrease of the US nuclear arsenal
Intentionally lowering the morale of the US Military by advising our wounded soldiers that they will soon have to pay for their own treatment
HUGE increase in taxes on ALL energy use — for everyone — to appease the global warming crowd and appointing as Energy Tsar former leader of the Socialist Party International and an agent for world government Carol Browner. Note: Ms. Browner has said that when energy companies can provide their 'smart systems' she will be able to regulate how much energy is distributed to each and every private home!
Apologizing to Europe for America being arrogant and dismissive.
Recently, in San Francisco, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that she supports illegal immigrants and does not support the US legal systems attempts to stop them. In fact, she said "Raids and deportation are anti-American"

Take-over of the US automotive industry, including firing of the CEO of General Motors, without Board or stockholder consent.

Committed generational theft (John McCain's words) by loading debt on our children and grandchildren they will never be able to pay off.

Disregarded the Congressional Budget Office's assessment that his new budget would result in interest payments as high as $1 trillion per year as early as 2014.

All of the above have one thing in common. They are all planned and meant to weaken the power of US citizens and increase the power of Obama and the Democrats. Are you getting scared yet?

Feds undercut civilian supply of ammo:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92095

Eric Holder gun control nightmare:
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/holder_gun_control/2008/11/21/153808.html

Durbin Doctrine's assault on free speech:
http://foundry.heritage.org/2009/03/16/morning-bell-the-durbin-doctrine-assault-on-free-speech/

Dodd legislation protecting AIG bonuses:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090317141202AAOLIwf

Obama's work to nationalize almost everything in the USA:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS305&q=Obama%27s+efforts+toward+industry+nationalization&btnG=Search

Lose your property for growing food?:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92002

Obama nabs political control over census:
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/census_emanuel_republican/2009/02/08/179458.html

Radical ACORN to work on 2010 census:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/17/lawmakers-concerned-role-acorn-census/

Obama cuts defense funding:
http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=22694&prog=zgp&proj=zusr

Obama to cut nuclear arsenal:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/02/22/nuclear_agenda_draws_scrutiny/

Obama to make wounded soldiers pay for own treatment:
http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs/obama-to-make-wounded-american

Obama's Energy Czar: Socialist Agent For World Government
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamas-energy-czar-socialist-agent-for-world-government.html

Obama: Courting our enemies while 'dissing' our friends:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9180

Missouri police told anti-Obama 3rd party supporters to be treated as possible militia members or terrorists:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/missouri_police_given_chilling.html

Pelosi supports illegals over US law:
Video: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/18/pelosi-tells-illegal-immigrants-work-site-raids-american/

Truth Squads and Thought Police

2009-03-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

One would think that the idea of "thought police", a la Minority Report, was science fiction, or at least a thing of the distant future. Not according to the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), a division of the Missouri State Police. According to a report issued by the MIAC in February (http://www.firearmscoalition.org/images/news/miac-militia-2009.pdf), the Missouri State Police are being asked to to police thought & opinion.

The MIAC report suggests that people with third party political (like for Ron Paul - their words, not mine!), gun rights, anti-immigration and abortion rights bumper stickers are listed as warning signs that the occupants may be potential terrorists. Call my a Constructionist, but wouldn't this impede on my First Amendment right to free speech?

As we start to connect the dots about all the different "organizing" and constitutional law-breaking going on (like Congress voting to give Washington DC a voting Senator and Representatives, which the US Constitution specifically prohibits), Conservatives should begin to take notice, cast aside any notion of coincidence, and stand up for the ideals that created this great Nation.

Reference Reading:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/missouri_police_given_chilling.html

A Knock On The Door

2009-03-18T18:14:00.000-07:00

I have never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but these days, it's becoming harder and harder not to. The latest straw on the camel's back? The "Organizing for America" (OFA) "movement". I put "movement" in quotes, because it is not really a movement, but a project of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and President Barack Obama. The President describes OFA as a "grass roots movement". Only this one is sponsored by and organized by a sitting president and the DNC.

"Pledges" are asked to pledge their allegiance to...not the Flag, not the Constitution..but the President Obama and his "bold plan". There has been other times in the history of the world this has happened. Germany in the 1930's. Cuba in the late 1950's. China in the late 1960's. Most recently, Venezuela in the late 2000's.

In each of these sad periods in history, countries that had been democratic started their turn to Socialism, then Communism. In Germany in the 30's, it was the Hitler Youth. In the 50's the July 26 Movement in Cuba:

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/27198.htm

The Red Guard in China in the '60's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards_(China)

And in Venezuela, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/03/america/03venez.php

The OFA pledges will go door to door, sell the Agenda, and ask for your pledge. Any guess if they'll be taking notes while there about your willingness to pledge, whether you own a gun, if you drive an SUV, and anything else they think is an indicator you aren't on board with the Prez' plan.

I'll leave it to you each to read the above links (including one from the US State Department), then compare what you read to the following article at American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/the_knock_on_the_door.html

And draw your own conclusions as to where the Democratic Party plans to take America.

Just in case you think this is a bunch of bull, check out the website at www.barackobama.org.

The Dodd Double Standard

2009-03-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

Well, we knew it couldn't take long for the Dems to start double-talking on the AIG bailout. First of all, let me say I believe there is something inherently problematic with AIG giving out bonuses while taking over $170 BILLION in bailout dollars. However, these bonuses were contractual obligations in effect before any of the bailouts. And while as part owner of AIG now, I take some humbrage with it, as a business owner and believer in the rule of law, a contract is a contract. If the individuals held up their respective end of the deal, so should AIG, government outrage or not.

Now, to the root of the issue....as the original AIG bailout was moving through a Democratic controlled Congress, Senator Christopher Dodd (D) of Connecticut inserted a provision that required AIG to honor any previous bonus contracts! Now he is among the group of senators that is publicly railing AIG to withhold the bonuses, even standing with Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Barney Frank (D-MA) in publicly announcing that if AIG does pay them, they will "tax the entire amount!" (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/17/aig.bonuses/).

Well, let's roll out the hypocritical wagon once again. It was only six or so months ago that Dodd was making sure the bonus provision was in the bill to "ensure talent retention". Well, the talent stayed, and now the bonuses are owed.

Senator Dodd, you speak with forked tongue! What's next? Dodd said, "We have a right to tax," the Connecticut Democrat told CNN. "You could write a tax provision that's narrowly crafted only to the people receiving bonuses." Isn't this exactly where the Alternative Minimum Tax (ATM) started? The ATM was "narrrowly crafted" in 1969 to target 155 individuals who made over $200,000 and paid no taxes (http://hnn.us/articles/11819.html). By 2010, over 30 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $75,000 will be hit with the ATM.

Sounds like a "carefully crafted" way to round a few million more of us contributing citizens up to pony up "our fair share" of the tax burden of our country.

The Politics of Unions

2009-03-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it didn't take long for the payback to start. Buried in the Omnibus budget bill, among the pork, is a provision to kill a very successful school voucher program in Washington DC. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) was passed on 2004 and gives over 1,700 public school students scholarships (vouchers) of $7,500 to attend private school, which is half the cost of sending a kid to public school in DC, one of the most expensive per capita in the country, and one in which barely half of all students graduate.

Is this because teacher's unions hate vouchers? We'll partly. But in my opinion, it is also because the DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee has bucked the unions and offered higher salaries to teachers willing to forgo tenure for higher pay based on performance, in some cases, raises of up to $40,000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/education/13tenure.html?_r=1&ref=education).

Since her pay-for-performance program started, she's been drawing fire from teacher's unions, and now, it looks like her program of actually giving kids good educations at half the cost of public schools is in jeopardy.

Finally we get a school superintendent that is on the cutting edge of not only helping low income minority kids pick themselves up and get a good education, but is also reforming teacher pay - while bucking the union, and our Congress is trying to stamp it out. God forbid we actually produce some thinkers out of our school system!

The Democrats always campaign on being the party of minorities and the "little guy". I hope the minorities and little guys remember this next election.

FOLLOWUP!

Yes, just the day after President Obama held a press conference extolling the virtues of teacher pay-for-performance, vouchers and charter schools, he approved the 2009 Omnibus Budget bill, including the amendment that killed the DC OSP scholarship program. Between hiring lobbyists, tax cheats and killing the few government programs that are working, the Obama Presidency's slogan should be "Do as I say...not as I do."

Tea Parties Nationwide

2009-03-03T04:47:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 27, 2009 may very well become known as the day it started. Citizens in 32 cities around the country participated in "Tea Parties" in protest of the tax and spend government policies spewing out of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress.

The sad part about it is the little to no coverage the protests received from the Main Stream Media (MSM). Now if it were police brutality or abortion rights, the media would have been all over it, reporting on how many of thousands of people attended and such.

Unfortunately, the coverage is much like that received by rallies for the Fair Tax (see www.fairtax.org). Last year, there were capacity-plus crowds at rallies in Atlanta, Orlando and a few other cities. The Atlanta rally was held in a convention center that holds almost 5000. After filling the venue, about another 3000 citizens ralied in the parking lot, listening to the rally on their radios.

In Orlando, a Fair Tax rally drew 10,000 to 12,000 people. The local TV gave it a mention, then did an entire segment on an anti-war rally in which about 100 people participated in.

In Nashville, a Far Tax rally drew almost 10,000, yet got little to no coverage in the MSM.

We live in a time where the MSM has virtual control over the flow of information to the majority of the voting public that doesn't know how or where else to look for the truth, or at least a differing opinion. We informed and motivated fiscal conservatives/patriots must find a way to spread the word, inform the masses, and take back our Country before it is too late.

Oh, And Another Thing....

2009-02-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

This one borders on the unbelievable, but these days, nothing surprises, does it?

Representative Jose Serrano (D-NY) has introduced House Joint Resolution 5 into the House of Representatives to abolish the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, thereby removing the term limits on the office of the President of the United States. Now, as a Constitutional Amendment, this would require ratification by 3/4 of the States within 7 years of submission, which is unlikely today, but it sits out there, quietly waiting, for 7 years...

I guess they weren't kidding when they referred to him as "King Obama".

Socialism is on it's way

2009-02-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

There were a lot of little hints uncovered during the presidential campaign that we were given about President Obama's prior associations. The mainstream media (MSM) was able to quash all of them before they got out to the voting public. First there was Rev. Wright, then William Ayers, then his association with the Communist Party of America, and finally, his association with ACORN. With the little amount of information and time, we normal citizens just couldn't connect the dots.

There is an article on American Thinker website (www.americanthinker.com) that does a tremendous job of connecting the dots. I only wish the article, written by James Simpson on September 28, 2008, would have gotten more publicity than it did. I only found it today. Read it yourself at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

The article connects President Obama with several socialist and communist mentors and organizations dating back to the early 1990's, and lays out a published, yes, PUBLISHED!, strategy on how to bring about radical change to the United States:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Sound familiar? I urge you to read this article and pass it along to as many people who will listen.

The Fairness Doctrine

2009-02-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

One of the ways that conservative America stays informed on what is really going on in Washington is listening to conservative talk radio. Remember the Immigration reform legislation that was attempted a couple of years ago? The one that would have given amnesty to somewhere between 10 million and 20 million illegal aliens? Had it not been for the coverage of the issue by conservative talk radio, and the movement to action of all the listeners, the legislation would have likely passed.

In this day of the mainstream media constantly trying to influence public opinion instead of reporting the news, talk radio has been the one place to go to get the “other’ point of view. Without talk radio and the internet, the liberal media and democrat-heavy Federal government would be able to control pretty much all the content we see, hear or read.

The Fairness Doctrine is a defunct federal rule that required broadcasters to present contrasting views on controversial issues. The 1940s regulation that created the Fairness Doctrine was held to be unconstitutional by a 1986 decision of the Federal Communications Commission. The Department of Justice reached the same conclusion in 1987.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich) told liberal radio host Bill Press last week she expects hearings soon on reviving the policy. During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s January 15th confirmation hearing for Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder, both Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala) questioned Holder on his stance on the Doctrine. He first refused to answer, then agreed to provide a written response after the hearing.

His written response was that he’d work with other agencies in the new administration and the Department's Office of Legal Counsel to reach a considered view about the constitutionality of the specific law or regulation under consideration”. "Arrgh! Politician-speak!

I believe that Stabenow and Holder’s comments represent the first hint that the new Administration may re-open what has been “settled doctrine” within the Department of Justice and in the courts for over two decades.The original argument used to justify these restrictions—that the scarcity of media outlets required the government to intervene in order to guarantee a "diversity" of political opinion—has long since been overcome by the proliferation of cable channels, web sites, blogs, etc.

My question is; if it passes, will its requirements flow both ways, requiring the Mainstream Media to present equal time to conservative views? If current events are indicators of the future, it’s not likely.

Gun Control and the 2nd Amendment

2009-02-17T13:58:00.000-08:00

There are two separate legislative actions going on in the country right now that are attempts to hamper our 2^ndAmendment right to keep and bear arms. The first is the "Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act." The bill is a licensing and registration scheme.

The measure calls for all handgun owners to submit to the federal government an application, a completed, written firearm safety test; private mental health records; and a fee. The bill would further require the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer, and owner's address in

America

.

The second are the multiple states with legislation in various stages requiring the encoding of ammunition. The bills would require ammunition manufacturers to engrave a serial number on "the base of the bullet and the inside of the cartridge casing of each round of ammunition for popular sporting caliber center-fire rifles, all center-fire pistols, all .22 rimfire rifles and pistols, and all 12 gauge shotguns.

People would be required to forfeit all personally-owned non-encoded ammunition. After a certain date, it would be illegal to possess non-encoded ammunition. Reloading (re-using cartridge cases multiple times) would be abolished. There would be no way to correspond serial numbers on cartridge cases, and different sets and quantities of bullets.

People would be required to separately register every box of "encoded ammunition." This information would be supplied to the police. Most states do not even require registration of guns. Each box of ammunition would have a unique serial number, thus a separate registration.

Private citizens would have to maintain records, if they sold ammunition to anyone, including family members or friends.

A tax of five cents a round would be imposed on private citizens, not only upon initial sale, but every time the ammunition changes hands thereafter.

This legislation is currently pending in 18 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.

"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism."

- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

2009-02-16T15:41:00.000-08:00

So, President Obama is going to sign the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act tomorrow. After stating that the Bush tax rebates didn't work, the Dems are coming up with more of the same...only they say theirs will be different and will stimulate the economy, unlike the Bush rebates, because they will dole them out over time, so people will consider them a more permanent part of their income, not a "one-time" infusion that was mostly used as savings or to pay down debt.

How will they accomplish this? By adding $8 per week to each of our paychecks. A full $32 per month! I have started my shopping list already. Below are a few things I'm going to run out and buy when my $8 per week starts rolling in:

Three additional gallons of gas.
One medium pizza from Dominos (if I use a coupon)
One beer and an order of nachos (if I go dutch on the nachos) during happy hour
Popcorn at the movies (but not the movie...that's $10)
A combo meal at Arby's...I'll get a little change back on this one.

Give me some ideas on what you'll spend your new-found government hand-out on....

Unfortunately, the things that our government needs to do to invigorate our economy are absent from the Act. Like:

Permanent Tax breaks for small businesses - who create 70% of all jobs in our economy.
Oh, they are giving a capital gains tax break to small businesses? Right. Most small businesses are S-corps or LLCs. Neither of which pay taxes. All income from both flows down to the individual owners to pay on their personal taxes. Nope, no capital gains breaks for them.

Getting rid of the Death Tax. Let me get this straight...I am a productive member of society all my life, earn money, pay taxes, and when I kick the bucket, Uncle Sam gets almost half of what I have saved. Yeah, that's fair.

Check out www.fairtax.org. This is the one single plan that would turn the US economy around, and fast.

Who Represents You in Congress

2009-02-15T09:24:00.001-08:00

I am amazed at how many people I know that have no idea who their Senators or Representatives are in Congress. If you don't know, go to the following website and find out:

http://www.votesmart.org/

You can also find out how your Congressman or Congresswoman voted on issues.

Speaking of voting, the do you know that no where in the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, or in the US Bill of Rights do any of these documents give the American citizen the right to vote in Federal elections? Hey - don't trust me, read them yourself.

http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights.html

The Stimulus, Oops!, The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act

2009-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

First, let me qualify that the entire content of this post is my own research. Second, if you'd rather not have me share my thought with you via email, please let me know and I'll scratch you from my distribution list - no hard feelings. I just believe that everyone I've included here has "skin in the game" and we need to stay informed of what our politicians are up to.

On Tuesday of this past week, the US House of Representatives passed a unanimous resolution that prior to voting on the Stimulus bill (now retitled the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act)once it came out of committee, it would be posted for 48 hours to allow the American people to see what it contained. The bill came out of committee around midnight on Thursday, and was voted on and passed by the House mid afternoon on Friday, slightly more than 12 hours later. All republicans and six democrats voted against the bill, arguing that how can the body vote on an 1100 page, $787 billion bill without reading it first. Is this the transparency we were promised?

I pulled the bill summary off the House Appropriations Committee's website this morning (http://appropriations.house.gov/) and read the 12 page "detailed" summary.

(The entire bill can be downloaded at http://www.americansolutions.com/Blog/Read.aspx?guid=18834964-c412-4d07-ae85-d5559dbf20960). Congress posted it in an unsearchable format (go figure).

The total amount of appropriations/expenditures listed in the "Detail" add up to only $274 billion, leaving over $500 billion, or a full two thirds, of the content of the bill unaccounted for.

I know I am trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun here, but how much more of this will the American people take before we decide to dress up like indians and start throwing tea off the ships in the harbor?