The missing facts in President Obama’s news conference

A rat is a rat no matter how you look at it. Obama's speech was pure class warfare and the blueprint for his 2012 campaign. When will he become the President of all the people and not just his far left allies and the illegals? His budget received not a single vote in the Senate. Everyone knows he is not serious and cares little about the deficit. Now he is berating the Republicans for lack of leadership. What a farce. Where is his plan?

Excerpt: The president, clearly intending to increase pressure on the GOP, lambasted Republicans for, in his words, refusing to get rid of “tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires” before cutting aid to the less well-off. He also addressed questions on Libya.

Let’s parse some of his answers and explain what he means — and how factual he was.

“The tax cuts I'm proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owner. . . . Before we ask our seniors to pay more for health care, before we cut our children's education, before we sacrifice our commitment to the research and innovation that will help create more jobs in the economy, I think it's only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well to give up that tax break that no other business enjoys.”
The White House and Congress have been looking for ways to cut the deficit over 10 years by $2 trillion to $4 trillion. Republicans want to cut spending, while Democrats have sought ways to increase revenues — a nonstarter for most Republicans.

While there have been reports the administration is seeking $400 billion in additional revenue, that’s apparently not a real number. At this point, the White House might accept just about anything that demonstrates what the president calls a “balanced solution.”

In a bit of class jujitsu, the president six times mentioned eliminating a tax loophole for corporate jets, frequently pitting it against student loans or food safety. It’s a potent image, but in the context of a $4 trillion goal, it is essentially meaningless. The item is so small the White House could not even provide an estimate of the revenue that would be raised, but other estimates suggest it would amount to $3 billion over 10 years.

Meanwhile, student financial assistance, just for 2011, is about $42 billion. So the corporate jet loophole — which involves the fact that such assets can be depreciated over five years, rather than the seven for commercial jets — just is not going to raise a lot of money. It certainly wouldn’t save many student loans.

Going after hedge fund managers might raise about $15 billion over 10 years, but in a different life The Fact Checker covered Wall Street and is pretty certain those financial wizards would figure out a way to avoid this tax shift. John Carney of CNBC actually outlined how that would work.

Eliminating oil and gas preferences would raise $44 billion over 10 years, according to administration figures (table S-8), so that begins to look like real money. But the real dollars are in what the president calls “tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires” — eliminating the ability of people making more than $250,000 to itemize their deductions. That proposal would raise $290 billion over 10 years.

Wait a minute, the president said he would target “millionaires and billionaires” and yet the fine print of his proposal would affect couples making more than $250,000 (and individuals making more than $200,000)? That’s right.

Read full Washington Post article here.

Obama - Are You A Flake?

US: The myth of killer mercury - The EPA at Work.

What Obama cannot get from Congress, he will do a “walk-around” to get it done. This is a usurpation of Congress’s power and our rights to representation. We want a President, not a Dictator.

Excerpt: The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued 946 pages of new rules, requiring that U.S. power plants sharply reduce (already low) emissions of mercury and 83 other air pollutants. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that, while the regulations will cost electricity producers $10.9 billion annually, they will save 17,000 lives and generate up to $140 billion in health benefits.

There is no factual basis for these assertions. To build its case, EPA systematically cherry-picked supportive studies (many of them dated) and ignored extensive evidence and clinical studies that contradict its regulatory agenda, which is to punish hydrocarbon use and close down coal-fired power plants.

Mercury (Hg) has always existed naturally in Earth’s environment. A 2009 study found numerous spikes (and drops) in mercury deposition in Antarctic ice over the past 650,000-years. Mercury is found in air, water, rocks, soil and trees (which absorb it from the environment). This is why our bodies evolved with proteins and antioxidants that help protect us from this and other potential contaminants.

A further defense comes from selenium, which is found in fish and animals. Its strong attraction to mercury molecules protects fish and people against buildups of methylmercury, mercury’s biologically active and more toxic form. Thus, the 200,000,000 tons of mercury naturally present in seawater have never posed a danger to any living being, even though they could theoretically be converted into methylmercury.

Modern technologies enable us to detect infinitesimal amounts in air and water. However, quantities of mercury measured in lake waters are often no more than 0.00000001 gram of mercury per liter. Lab technicians typically wear special garments when measuring mercury levels, not to protect themselves – but to ensure accurate measurements, because even breathing on a sample can triple a reading!

How do America’s coal-burning power plants enter into the picture?

The latest government, university and independent studies reveal that those power plants emit an estimated 41-48 tons of mercury per year. This is what EPA claims poses a serious health risk.

However, US forest fires emit at least 44 tons per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tpy globally; Chinese power plants eject 400 tpy; and volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year!

All these emissions enter the global atmospheric system and become part of the US air mass.

Thus, US power plants account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air Americans breathe. Even eliminating every milligram of this mercury will do nothing about the other 99.5% in America’s atmosphere.

And yet, in the face of these minuscule risks, EPA nevertheless demands that utility companies spend billions every year retrofitting coal-fired power plants that produce half of all US electricity, and 70-98% of electricity in twelve states. Its regulators simultaneously ignore the positive results of medical studies that clearly show its new restrictions are not needed and will not improve people’s health.

Read full report here.

Is Medicare A Good Deal?

Excerpt: Think about everything you will pay to support Medicare: the payroll taxes while you are working, the premiums during retirement, and your share of the income taxes that subsidize the system. Then compare that to the benefits of Medicare insurance, say, from age 65 until the day you die.

Are you likely to come out ahead? That depends in part on how old you are. If you are a typical 85-year-old, for example, you can expect about $55,000 of insurance benefits over and above everything you have been paying into the system. If you’re a typical 25-year-old, however, you will pay an extra $111,000 into the system, over and above any benefits you can expect to receive.

By the way, this is not the sort of calculations you want to try at home on a pocket calculator. It’s too complicated. Fortunately the heavy lifting has already been done by Andrew Rettenmaier and Courtney Collins in a report for the National Center for Policy Analysis. See the table.

If you are interested in how ObamaCare affects Medicare in detail, go here.

Sessions Confronts President's Budget Director Over Misleading Comments

Just saw my credit card balance go up this month. Paid as much as I spent this month but was SHOCKED that the debt went up by the amount of the interest. Obama and his budget director just told me that interest doesn't matter. LOL! The worst part about this is that they know many voters will believe this "crock of s--t".

Taxpayer funding isn’t a right

It is good that we still have a moderate/conservative majority on the court. Another 4 years of Obama and we probably won't. My guess is that ACORN, or whatever name they are now going with, are still getting significant funding from the taxpayers. They have been awfully quiet lately, not like the agitatiors that they really are

Excerpt: America’s long-suffering tax- payers scored a resounding victory as the Supreme Court told one of the nation’s fore- most tax-eating groups to take a hike.

The high court denied an appeal last week by the radical left-wing gangster group ACORN, ruling in effect that Congress was entitled to cut off federal taxpayer funding for the group, which routinely perpetrates voter fraud and encourages welfare recipients to buy houses they have no hope of paying for.

ACORN still matters because reports of its demise have been exaggerated. Although the national ACORN organization filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Election Day last year, ACORN is restructuring itself in time to help re-elect its former employee, President Obama, next year. ACORN’s voter-mobilization arm, Project Vote, is conducting business as usual out of ACORN’s D.C. offices.

The ACORN network has taken in an astounding $79 million in federal funding, and those are only the grants I could find in the U.S. government’s antiquated databases. The $79 million figure is $26 million more than the $53 million figure previously taken as gospel.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now asked the Supreme Court to review a decision of a circuit court that had found that the funding cutoff enacted in 2009 was not a “bill of attainder” forbidden by the Constitution.

Legal scholar Hans A. von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation flatly rejected the argument, saying, “The bill of attainder clause has never been read to prevent Congress from defunding an organization or a corporation whose employees engage in criminal conduct, and it has rarely been invoked by the modern Supreme Court.”

Of course, liberals are often impervious to reason, preferring to see the Constitution as authorizing everything they see as good and prohibiting everything they see as bad.

But what might have happened had the Supreme Court ruled the other way?

Meetings of the House and Senate spending committees would have turned into a new reality-TV show on C-SPAN that could have been called “ACLU Lawyers Gone Wild.”

Every tax-dollar-devouring pro-big-government group from Planned Parenthood to the National Council of La Raza to National Public Radio would have received a green light to bring so-called civil rights attorneys into congressional appropriations hearings to assist their special-interest clients in feeding at the public trough.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saved America from this ACORN-inspired nuttiness.

Read full Washington Times article here.

The Obama Scandal Buried by Eric Holder’s "Justice"

Chicago politics at its finest.

Excerpt: In the fall of 2008, so much was going favorably for Barack Obama, winning the November presidential election appeared a near-certainty. Perhaps if the New York Times had not buried a critical news story that could have rivaled that of the Reverend Wright debacle the previous spring, such victory would have been far less certain.

The Obama campaign had sent nearly a million dollars to the Acorn offshoot Citizens Services Inc in the months prior to the November election. That money was then officially noted as payment for such services as “staging and polling”. Evidence later uncovered the truth – that money was illegally used for ACORN-supported get out the vote campaigns for Barack Obama – a clear violation of federal election laws. The New York Times knew of the story, but refused to publish any information on it prior to the election. So too did other mainstream media outlets. And even after the votes had been cast, and after ACORN was shown to be a fraudulent and corrupt organization, the same mainstream media forces buried the story.

The only hope then for the full truth to be uncovered was to be an investigation into the Obama campaign’s illegal use of campaign funds by the Department of Justice. Any hope for such an investigation was effectively terminated when Barack Obama appointed Eric Holder as his new Attorney General – a full two months before Obama himself even took the presidential oath of office. Holder was already intimately aware of the ACORN-related election fund wrondoings, having served as a senior legal adviser to Barack Obama throughout the 2008 campaign. Getting Holder into the nation’s top legal spot was clearly a priority for Obama, indicated by Holder’s appointment coming before those of Hillary Clinton, Timothy Geithner, or Robert Gates. It would appear keeping federal investigations from developing against him were more important to then President-Elect Obama than working to secure the nation’s economic and self defense positions, a trend that continues within the Obama administration to present day.

Read Ulsterman report here.

Blacks Hit Hardest by Obama's Liberal Agenda

Unfortunately for the Republicans, President Johnson was right when he made the comment below. Blacks are blindly following the Democrats despite their abysmal record in fighting poverty and in education.

Excerpt: That President Obama’s race is associated with slavery suggests a cosmic karma. That he has become the leader of the party that went to war to preserve it is beyond ironic. This is the Democratic paradox.

For blacks, the national stain of slavery was survived by Lyndon Johnson’s dream writ large. As Ronald Kessler writes, when asked why the Civil Rights Bill had recently become so important to him, President Johnson said: “I’ll have them n——s voting Democratic for two hundred years.” History remembers Presidents, not senators. And despite the efforts of Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, whose leadership supplied the votes needed to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act that Johnson took credit for, black support, by a consistent 90% margin, became a democratic dream come true.

Eleven presidential elections later, blacks still blindly concede power to a political party whose ideals are anathema to our own. And two generations of playing the role of a politically duped voting bloc has resulted in enumerable losses. Black unemployment at “Depression-era levels” is, regrettably, the tip of the iceberg.

The Schott Foundation reports that 47% of African-American males graduate from high school. In D.C., the black homicide rate dropped over the last decade, but remained much higher than the average white murder rate. The National Campaign reports that 50% of black teen girls get pregnant at least once before age 20—nearly twice the national average.

These are all outgrowths of a disintegrated values system among many blacks. Most noticeably in a number of darkened inner city neighborhoods, where a miasma of underclass culture has been swallowed whole. Where a shrinking middle class, due to rampant illegitimacy and disproportionately high crime rates, produces poor expectations for home ownership and income equality.

Do not all Americans confront the profound problems facing black Americans? Of course. It’s these tragic disparities that call for headlines.

Elsewhere, Obama is fresh from another foreign trip and is already golfing again. His 30th fund-raising event to date puts him at an average of one fund-raiser every six days since New Year's.

The point here is the President’s priorities.

Read full Jerome Hudson article here.

The Obama Legacy

Kevin McCullough: Why It Will Be President Perry in 2013

This article is a good introduction to Governor Rick Perry, hopefully a soon to be Republican candidate for President. I agree that the field is full of lackluster candidates, or candidates that have no chance of defeating Obama.

The problem that we have is that the MSM has, for a number of years, acted as attack dogs for the liberal left. Any decent Republican, who cares about his/her family, would think twice and maybe three times before subjecting them to the 24/7 ridicule that they would undoubtedly receive.

Excerpt: For me the field of 2012 felt odd and disjointed as Governors Huckabee and Palin were long in making their minds up. Even now we still don't know the mind of the former Alaskan governor. But polling data was clear from February 2010 to April 2011 that if President Obama had been forced to face Gov. Huckabee he would lose.

The rest of the current field is interesting, but essentially so much alike, in so many ways, there are contrasts, but at times, hard to see.

Enter the candidate who has not even announced yet, the three term Governor from Texas, Rick Perry.

As I did in my 2006 piece, which was read by Rush Limbaugh the day after publication, let me give you five reasons Governor Perry would win.

1. HE CREATED MORE JOBS THAN OBAMA:

Of all the issues that will face the nation in 2012, the one that weighs even now most on the minds of those around household dinner tables is where they will find the next month's paycheck. In my book I detail the deterioration and the inexplicable refusal of solutions that will work by the Obama administration. President Obama was hired to make the economy better, to lower unemployment, to see Americans grow wealth, and at every level he has failed. It's bad enough that one out of ten workers can't find work. But the most damning statistic is that one out of five families is working as hard as they possibly can, but still can't pay their bills. Meanwhile over that same period of time Governor Perry has overseen job growth in Texas that sits at 47% of all jobs created in the entirety of the United States -- just during the two and half years Obama's been in office.

2. HE RESPECTS THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL BUSINESSES:

While President Obama has been loading up the tax burden, fees, fines, and penalties for small businesses with Obamacare, the threat of raised taxes, and pipe-dreams like "cap and trade," Governor Perry has reduced trivial regulation and made Texas such a dynamic environment to grow business that corporations are relocating from the troubled states of California and New York, just to set up shop, provide better service, and pay their workers better wages. Gov. Perry was even invited to the California Assembly only months ago to chat with lawmakers about how to create small business growth. One of those Assemblymen has been so inspired he started the "draft Perry" movement.

3. HE UNDERSTANDS THE ISSUE OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY:

Governor Perry has been famous for not exactly playing ball with the folks Washington, D.C. He has tried to use everything from humor to a serious demeanor in his opportunities for dialogue with President Obama and his administration to convince them of the problems that can happen when the federal government oversteps, overreaches, and over spends. He has refused federal monies for programs his state did not need. Even when Texas was experiencing massive wildfires his behavior was counter-intuitive for most politicians. He did not immediately turn to Washington with his hand out. Yet when his state's resources had been depleted he did come forward and ask for federal disaster aid in fighting the blazes. He's still waiting for an answer to his multiple requests for help from the administration. As an aside, let me say that the administration's silence on the Texas wildfires looks like pure politics.

4. HE HAS CORE CONVICTIONS:

While jogging recently Governor Perry allowed his pet labrador to run with him for his daily six miles. While on the jog, he and his pet were accosted by a menacing coyote. After remaining still and waiting to see what the wild coyote would do, the Governor pulled a .380 Ruger and shot the coyote dead, when it had become apparent the coyote was after his pup. Upon returning to the Governor's office he was queried about his "heartless" actions towards "innocent" animals. After answering more than one question on the matter, and in a mildly exasperated manner he replied, "Don't go after my dog!" In other words while the press was confused about his value system, he saw it in very simple to understand terms. He resonates with the average American voter. There is such a thing as right and wrong, and not everything needs a Presidential blue ribbon panel commission to determine if it is or not.

5. HE APPEALS TO ALL THREE CATEGORIES OF CONSERVATIVES:

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the first Republican candidate to bring together the conservatives across the economic, social values, and strong military spectrums. Governor Rick Perry has already demonstrated his ability to do the same. His economic abilities have already been cited. But he also just passed, "loser pays," in Texas. Trivial lawsuits will automatically diminish because those bringing them will have little incentive to try to shake down an organization merely attempting to wear them out. He also saw the sonogram law passed, pleasing pro-family advocates, which allows a legal abortion in Texas only after the mother of the unborn child is able to see her child with her own eyes first. He also pushed for passage of a voter I.D. law which will go a very long way to insure the integrity of the voting process in future elections in the state. His shared values of faith, his belief in the decency of America, and his lack of apology for sticking to his beliefs contrast very well with a current President who is best described in my new book as "ruthlessly pragmatic."

Read full Townhall article here.

Government 'surplus' stores now selling personal items TSA steals from passengers

Eroding freedoms!

Excerpt: If you have ever wondered what happens to the countless barrels of personal items that the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confiscates (steals) from air travelers every single day, you might be surprised to know that state governments are now reselling these supposedly "dangerous" items in government surplus stores for extra revenue.

According to a recent article in the Austin American-Statesman, Texas state surplus stores are reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars in new revenue every year for the state by selling travelers' "legally" stolen goods.

Formerly reserved for legitimate surplus items, state surplus stores in Texas are making a killing on the thousands of new "security threat" items being stolen by the TSA, which is, of course, the result of artificially-generated government paranoia. So harmless personal items like snow globes, for instance, are now in great supply at the surplus stores because they contain more than the three ounces of liquid permitted by the TSA.

Most travelers, of course, would never in their wildest imaginations think that a snow globe is a security threat, which is why many are shocked in the security line to discover that their simple souvenir is considered a terrorist threat by the TSA. But apparently that threat magically diminishes once the government decides to resell that same snow globe for cash to fill its coffers -- because surely the thousands of snow globes the shops receive are not inspected for the mythical explosives they could contain, prior to hitting surplus shelves.

Humorously, both the TSA and the agencies that are selling the stolen items refuse to admit that they are even confiscating them in the first place. According to the Statesman, a worker at a Texas surplus shop said, concerning how the items were obtained, "We say willfully surrendered." Using this same logic, of course, a man who holds up a woman and steals her purse did not actually steal -- the woman merely "willfully surrendered" her purse upon having a gun pointed in her face.

In reality, this fictitious robbery scenario, as absurd as it sounds, is exactly what the TSA is doing to air travelers every single day in the US. It is also what the illegal IRS does to American taxpayers with its "voluntary" income tax.

When presented with options that include inability to fly, arrest, imprisonment, or even being killed, most people will likely "willfully surrender" whatever is demanded of them, whether it is something as large as half their income, or something as miniscule as a plastic snow globe.


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032757_TSA_surplus.html#ixzz1QJ9wwG2F

Read full article here.

COL MIKE MCCALISTER for US Senate in Florida

Revolutionizing education, Hoosier-style School reform measures expand choices for parents and kids

Sounds like Indiana is getting it right. The focus should be on the students and not the teachers and their unions needs. Hopefully the rules changes, vouchers and tax incentives will create an atmosphere that is conducive to learning and will finally give the school administrations the ability to enforce an environment that will provide students the security they need to function.

Excerpt: States are a lot like stores. In both, top-level decision-making can influence whether they attract business or lose it. Understanding this, Indiana is upgrading one of its key “products,” which too often collects only dust on other states’ shelves.

This year, Indiana lawmakers made dramatic improvements to the state’s K-12 education system to empower teachers and principals, put students on a path to success, use taxpayer money more effectively and provide families with new schooling options.

One of those acts reformed collective bargaining so that only school employees’ wages and benefits can be negotiated. No more will school leaders be hamstrung by such inane contractual provisions as “faculty meetings are limited to one per month.” If principals and teachers are held accountable for school performance, it is only right to let them run those schools as they see fit.

Also, “last in, first out” was ended. Now, if teacher layoffs occur, the “last in” and oftentimes younger faculty - some of whom might be great teachers - won’t be indiscriminately fired first. Rather, they (and their principals) will be measured, compensated and retained based heavily on student learning and growth. If poor-performing schools can’t improve after five years, Indiana’s Department of Education can hire private firms to turn them around.

In addition, Indiana lawmakers created a statewide entity to authorize charter schools and lifted the cap on the number of students wanting to attend online schools - both public services. Now, Hoosiers who find traditional public schools unsuitable, will have more educational options from which to choose.

Private schools also play an important role in serving families; however, those schools typically are accessible only to parents who can afford them. In response, Indiana enacted what will be the nation’s largest school-voucher program, making nearly 60 percent of Hoosiers currently in public schools eligible for vouchers that can be used to cover private-school tuition. Passing such a large program was historic because now middle-class families will qualify for vouchers, too. Political concessions kept it from being 100 percent.

Parents already sending their kids to private schools without vouchers - while paying taxes for public schools they’re not using - will be able to receive a $1,000 tax deduction for tuition and other educational accessories. Home-school families will be eligible as well.

Recognizing that tuition also can be a burden in higher education, Indiana state leaders passed a measure allowing Hoosiers to leave high school early and use part of their senior-year public funding for public and private colleges. Why hold kids back if they’re ready to learn more and move on? That will give teachers more time to assist struggling children.

Finally, lawmakers ensured that tax dollars for education reach their intended purpose, i.e. funding students. Through something called the “de-ghoster,” Indiana school districts with declining enrollments were receiving temporary funds to ease the loss of students who weren’t even there. That would be like giving Target money for every customer it loses to Wal-Mart. It is costly and unnecessary, so lawmakers eliminated it.

Read full Washington Times article here.

BREAKING: Obama admin announces new ban on jobs

Obama cares not about joblessness and the plight of the American people. He is flushing our economy down the drain in order to placate his green-nut constituency.

Excerpt: Obama admin. announces jobs ban.

White House refuses to lift moratorium on Arizona mining

WASHINGTON — The nation’s largest grassroots advocate of rational environmental policy criticized Monday a White House announcement of a ban on uranium mining jobs across one million acres of Arizona.

“Like his ban on Gulf Coast energy jobs that threw thousands into unemployment, Barack Obama latest job ban throws more working families to the multi-million dollar environmentalist wolfpack,” said American Tradition Partnership Executive Director Donald Ferguson.
“Arizona is just the start. Barack Obama plans to soon issue more job bans in states like Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” said Ferguson. “The jobs Obama banned are not in the Grand Canyon and have no effect on the Grand Canyon. Rather than lead an economy recovery, Barack Obama chose to again mislead.”

“These radical green attacks on jobs are why businesses can’t create jobs under Obama,” said Ferguson.

The Obama administration made the announcement from the Grand Canyon, the first White House announcement made there since Vice President Joe Biden last year promoted “Recovery Summer,” which ended with higher unemployment. The Obama administration imposed a two-year ban on new uranium mining on 1 million acres of land next to the Grand Canyon. The jobs ban would have expired in July.

Citing Obama’s ongoing practice of using expanded executive authority to impose policies that would not meet congressional approval, American Tradition Partnership will push for more recorded congressional votes on bills restoring legislative authority back to Congress.
Among the bills promoted by ATP are Sen. Rand Paul’s REINS Act (S.299) which requires all proposed major federal regulations to be approved by Congress and legislation repealing the 1906 Antiquities Act, originally intended to protect small Indian archaeological sites from looters but is now being misinterpreted to declare millions of acres as “national monuments” in order to prevent jobs from being created on them.


Read full article here.

"Dirty Little Secret Behind the Chevy Volt"

Received this email today.


"Dirty Little Secret Behind the Chevy Volt".... The Rest of the Story.............

Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute and the editor of the forthcoming Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of our Government and our Lives, as well as the author of several other books on global warming. His Forbes column on the Chevy Volt is a case study in the nexus between big government corruption and big business rent-seeking.

Michaels briefly recaps the well-known consumer fraud in which GM has touted the Volt as an all-electric mass production vehicle on the supposed basis of which its sales receive a $7, 500 taxpayer subsidy, which still renders it overpriced and unmarketable.

Michaels notes that "sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February." There seems to be a trend here.

Michaels adds that GM has announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years and asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: "Who is going to buy all these cars?" But wait! Keep hope alive! There is a positive answer to the question. Jeffrey Immelt's GE will buy a boatload of those uneconomic GM cars.

Here the case study opens onto the inevitable political angle: Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is also awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power. Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants, so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama's Economic Advisory Board? But of course.

Michaels includes this hilarious detail in his case study: In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports their tests averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut .

(The [GM] engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.) It will be interesting to see what the range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries. When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of premium fuel; which, in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg. A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (instead of the Volt's 4), gets 34 mpg on the highway, and costs less than half of what CR paid, even with the tax break.

The story of the GM Volt deserves a place in the Harvard Business School curriculum.....but of course, it won't. It's a classic tale of the GOVERNMENT deciding what the public needs, not the marketplace.

PS.- Even the guy who sent this to me missed part of the point. What is one of the reasons for this? T o keep the UAW in business, because Obama owes them .. for his election .

Starting to make sense yet?
AS resent as last week 5/15/11 Oboma has purchased 50,000 volts for Gov use!!!

Plato: One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferior.

Christie’s breakthrough deal with Democrats

The unions are hopping mad in NJ. It must mean that Christie forged a great deal with the Democrats.

Excerpt: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board set out the terms of the budget deal New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) struck with Democrats in Trenton: “While the compromise with Democrats scales back Mr. Christie’s original proposal, it’s still a large step in the right direction. The deal would raise the retirement age for new workers to 65 from 62, and increase pension contributions to 7.5% from 5.5% for state workers and to 10% from 8.5% for public safety officers. The legislation would also suspend annual cost of living adjustments until the fund reaches a more healthy status. This provision alone could reduce retirees’ pension value by 30% over the next decade.” Then on the health-care side: “The average worker earning $60,000 would pay 27% of his premium while one earning more than $95,000 would pay 35%, which is roughly on par with what private sector employees pay. This change would be phased in over four years and reduce the state’s health costs by $300 million. Unions are especially furious because they’ll have to pay more if they want a more expensive plan, and because their costs will now be tied to health-care inflation, but this is the reality faced by most Americans.”

This is New Jersey. No tax hikes. No end to collective bargaining. Just unflinching resolve by the governor and a responsible leader of the state senate.

By gosh, if Democrats in Trenton can forgo tax hikes and pass real entitlement cuts, can’t they do it in D.C.? The key ingredient missing in D.C., of course, is executive leadership. President Obama has ducked, delegated and demagogued. It is up to Senate and House leaders to forge a deal. And then to complete the task, the voters in 2012 will need to elect a president with the same fortitude and courage as Christie. Maybe Christie himself.

Read full Washington Post Opinion article by Jennifer Rubin here.

PALIN - BACHMANN - 2012

Interesting video!

Allen West makes waves, earns tea-party raves

This is a very good article about Allen West and his fight for re-election in Florida.

Excerpt: Firm in his convictions and unafraid to share them. It was vintage West — brash, brusque and bombastic.

The black biker and conservative Republican who became a fixture on the tea party circuit has brought his own brand to Congress.

“I’m not a career politician,” West says. “I’m just being myself.”

When West speaks his mind, it turns on his tea party fan base, which is hoping the fiery freshman will run for president in 2012. But Democrats consider him vulnerable. Two are already gunning for his seat, repeating the 2010 campaign attack line that he’s too far right for the moderate Broward-Palm Beach district that went for Democrats Barack Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004. Republicans are looking to defend him, putting his congressional seat in the first round of a national protection program aimed at keeping their most endangered candidates in office.

West, characteristically, has a blunt message for his opponents: “Tell them to have fun, try,” he says.

“I’m not a vulnerable candidate, I’m a target,” he says. “I’m a target because the Democrats are not used to anyone who will stand up and confront them.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/18/2273469/allen-west-makes-waves-earns-tea.html#ixzz1PjY2RPwH

Read Miami Herald article here.

Freedom in the 50 States 2011

Bald Eagle Music Video "This Is America"

Palin email bombshell: Some liberals finally start to feel her pain

Palin has been vilified in the MSM to a point where a mortal person would fade into the woodwork. Not Sarah; she is still standing and in the 2012 Presidential mix. This email scam perpetuated by the MSM is just another indication that the liberal left is petrified by Palin's message. Whether or not she is the one to inhabit the White House in 2013, the message is a solid one and one that is resonating throughout the USA. Sarah is no lightweight, as a review of her emails shows, and the hinterlands are rallying around her cause.

Excerpt: The Sarah Palin email saga produced exactly one bombshell: The mainstream media actually managed to elicit sympathy for Sarah Palin from the showbiz elite. From Jon Stewart’s brilliant rant to the supportive tweets from Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Palin found defenders in quarters where she had previously found nothing but ridicule and scorn.

For those of you who were focusing on more important things over the last few days (such as the debt ceiling or the Weiner photos), here’s a quick recap of the Palin email story: After almost three years of legal haggling, the state of Alaska on Friday released over 24,000 pages of emails sent or received by Sarah Palin during her term as governor. Mother Jones and other media outlets had used the flimsiest of pretexts to demand the release of those emails: A local activist had suspected Palin of conducting some political activities on government time. If that’s the standard, then journalists should be poring through the emails of every single elected official in the country (starting with the president). And while they’re at it, they should investigate whether gambling was going on in Casablanca during World War II.

The media quickly forgot about the limited pretext for their supposedly compelling need to snoop through Palin’s emails. The project morphed into an open-ended fishing expedition in the hope of finding something — anything — that would make Palin look bad. The New York Times enlisted the help of its readers to find “interesting and newsworthy emails, people or events that we may want to highlight.” The Washington Post issued a similar call to crowd-source their hunt for dirt on Palin — as if they were inviting the entire community to participate in the stoning of a witch.

Journalists were so blinded by their Palin obsession that they lost sight of what their job is. Where there’s smoke, it’s a journalist’s job to investigate relentlessly to find the smoking gun. From Watergate to Weinergate, that’s been the model for investigative journalism.

Read full daily caller article here.

HOW TO FIX PUBLIC EDUCATION: GET RID OF IT!

Read Lee's full article to see the sound reasoning behind his suggestions. After all, since Jimmy Carter in 1979, when the Dept. of Education was established, our educational standing in the world has plummeted.

Excerpt: If you want to fix America, you have to fix America’s broken education system; and you must start by getting rid of the one we have.

I’ve been up in front of too many classrooms in too many different schools, and had lunch in too many different teachers’ lounges, to be wrong about this. I have also sat through more school board meetings, in more towns, and pored over more school budgets, than I care to remember.

Here are a few suggestions for getting out from under the costliest and least effective education establishment in human history.

- De-certify the teachers’ unions.

- Abolish the U.S. Department of Education.

- Abolish the state education departments.

- Grant absolute autonomy to local school boards.

- Abolish the requirement for teacher certification.

- Give tax breaks to parents who home-school or send their kids to private school.

- Encourage churches to set up in-house schools and courses.

All of what we are proposing here is tried and true. It’s all been done before. After all, public schooling wasn’t even invented until well into the 19th century.

Surely we can get along without the unions fixed like tapeworms to our paychecks; without a federal Dept. of Education that was only created in 1979; without state educrats forcing local school districts to spend money that they don’t have; without teacher certification programs that are of no demonstrable benefit to anyone but those who provide them; and without failing schools that cost us $20,000 a year per child—where the superintendent and the assorted assistant superintendents have district paid-for cars and credit cards, the kids never learn how to read, and the toilets don’t flush. You’ve all seen such things on the nightly news.

If even a few of the above recommendations were adopted, we would have better schooling at a lower cost—which guarantees that the teachers’ unions will oppose them all.

Yes, I know—the public schools were better in the days of “Our Miss Brooks,” they weren’t that awful when the kids from “Leave It to Beaver” went there. A couple of decades of teacher certification programs and ultra-leftist union leaders have done their work only too well, and the schools are that awful now.

And it’s time we fixed it.

Read Lee Duigon's article here.

Contempt Charges Coming Against Obama DOJ?

Probably another one of Obama's diversion tactics. What is he slipping by us now?

Excerpt: On Monday, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa laid out the historical and legal justification for contempt charges to be filed against the Obama Department of Justice.

For those unfamiliar with the political hearing process, Monday’s Darrell Issa-initiated investigation of the now infamous Gunrunner project may have appeared a tedious, long-winded affair. Not so. By D.C. standards, what Issa pulled off was brilliant political stagecraft, which ultimately may prove highly damaging to the Obama administration.

In a 90-minute time span, the terms “cover-up”, “Watergate”, and “Iran-Contra”, were repeated numerous times as a table of constitutional scholars appeared unanimous in their opinion that Obama’s DOJ was in violation of the right of Congress to make applicable requests for information – in this case information surrounding Project Gunrunner that resulted in the death of U.S. border agent Brian Terry and likely hundreds more civillians just across the Mexican border. Since 2009, thousands of guns were allowed to be sold to Mexican drug cartels – guns that were in turn used against U.S. law enforcement, civilians, and their Mexican counterparts.

Attorney General Eric Holder testified before Congress he knew nothing of the program, but that he would launch “an internal investigation.” Since that time, no findings have been disclosed, as Holder continues to ignore Congressional requests for further information.

Read full report here.

The Obama Legacy

THIS SENIOR CITIZEN NAILED IT

Received this email today and thought I'd pass it on.

THIS SENIOR CITIZEN NAILED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming, Co-Chair of Obama's deficit commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared "Social Security" to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats.
August, 2010.

Here's a response in a letter from a unknown fellow in Montana....I think he is a little ticked off! He also tells it like it is ! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight..

1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS.

2.. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15
years old. I am now 63).

3 My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus
bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud.

4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to move the
goalposts YET AGAIN.

5 I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills.

6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why?
Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" on your incompetence. Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU.

1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during
your pathetic 50-year political career?

2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?

3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual,have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?

It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators called Congress who are the "greedy" ones. It is you and your fellow nutcases who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from

millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That's right,sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers. You know it, we know it, and

you know that we know it.

And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch. If you like the way things are in America, delete this. If you agree with what a fellow Montana citizen says, PASS IT ON!!!!

Top NLRB Lawyer to Testify (Reluctantly) at House Hearing on Boeing

Good luck to Boeing on June 17th. They will need all they can get to survive in that liberal part of the country. Meanwhile, those SC workers that are to be hired are denied their seat at the hearing by the NLRB judge. Another one of those "has no standing" rulings.

Excerpt: The National Labor Relations Board’s acting general counsel will testify under duress at a congressional hearing in South Carolina where he is expected to face a barrage of questions from Republicans on the complaint his agency filed against Boeing Co. alleging labor-law violations.

Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon had declined the invitation to testify June 17th, citing a risk that his appearance could hurt the parties’ rights to a fair trial. The case is scheduled to start next Tuesday in Seattle.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which is holding the South Carolina hearing, asked Mr. Solomon to reconsider or face a possible subpoena to appear.

Mr. Solomon’s June 17th appearance will occur the same week that the NLRB judge will formally start reviewing the complaint at a Seattle hearing. It will occur against a backdrop of increasing political sparring over whether the government can dictate where a company chooses to do business.

Meantime, three Boeing employees who sought to defend the company at an NLRB hearing are out of luck.

The NLRB judge overseeing the hearing Tuesday in Seattle rejected their motion to intervene in the agency’s labor complaint. The South Carolina-based workers “are simply not directly interested parties with a legitimate direct interest in the outcome” of the case, Judge Clifford Anderson said in his decision. There is ”no reasonable basis” to allow the intervention, he wrote.

His denial is the latest development in what has become a substantial political clash over whether the government can dictate where a company chooses to do business.

Read full WSJ report here.

Obama On Defense - Giving Away the Farm

The security of our nation is at stake and our "Commander in Chief" is so naive it would be laughable if not so dangerous. Obama's number one job is the security of the USA. This one decision should be enough for the voters to get rid of Obama once and for all.

Excerpt: President Barack Obama's administration recently threatened to veto the defense budget, citing "serious concerns" over provisions that limit the U.S. missile defense know-how that the White House is permitted to share with Moscow. This is the sort of information that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in his earlier days, would have assigned his spies to steal. Through its single-minded pursuit of "resetting" relations with Russia, the Obama administration may simply be willing to hand over this information and, in doing so, weaken U.S. national security.

Only two days after issuing the veto threat -- and as Obama tried to warm Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to U.S. missile defense plans at the G-8 Summit in Deauville, France -- the House of Representatives passed the defense bill. It included the provision that the president's team finds so offensive: Section 1228 requires that no funds can be used to provide the Russian Federation with sensitive U.S. missile defense technology.

This act of congressional prudence did not come out of nowhere. The Senate debate over New START raised questions about what the Obama administration may have promised Moscow regarding U.S. missile defense plans. The debate stemmed from the treaty's preamble, which linked offensive and defensive weapons, and a Russian unilateral statement that stated ratification of the treaty was conditional on whether the United States made improvements to its missile defense systems. In a treaty about reducing offensive weapons, it was clear the Russians required the Obama administration to include U.S. defenses in the bargain.

Leaders in the House, and particularly the Armed Services Committee, deserve commendation for trying to address these weaknesses. The House defense bill added funds for short-range defenses, the GMD system, and Aegis; and perhaps most strikingly, it mandated the administration to conduct a study on the technical and operational feasibility of space-based interceptors -- the ideal type of system to intercept missiles at the optimal point, during their boost phase.

But as the administration's veto threat demonstrates, the future of U.S. missile defense requires more than Congress alone can provide. Here's hoping that the White House comes to its senses and stops trying to use a degradation in U.S. national security to purchase a Russian "reset."

Read full report here.

Bilderberg 2011: Full Official Attendee List

Thought you might be interested in who the elites are that are working on the new world order.

Excerpt: Thanks to the fantastic work of Bilderberg activists, journalists and the Swiss media, we have now been able to obtain the full official list of 2011 Bilderberg attendees. Routinely, some members request that their names be kept off the roster so there will be additional Bilderbergers in attendance.

Infowars will be on the scene identifying other attendees not on the list.

USA

Alexander, Keith B., Commander, USCYBERCOM; Director, National Security Agency
Altman, Roger C., Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc.
Bezos, Jeff, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
Collins, Timothy C., CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC
Feldstein, Martin S., George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Hoffman, Reid, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
Hughes, Chris R., Co-founder, Facebook
Jacobs, Kenneth M., Chairman & CEO, Lazard
Johnson, James A., Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
Jordan, Jr., Vernon E., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
Keane, John M., Senior Partner, SCP Partners; General, US Army, Retired
Kissinger, Henry A., Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Kleinfeld, Klaus, Chairman and CEO, Alcoa
Kravis, Henry R., Co-Chairman and co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis, Roberts & Co.
Kravis, Marie-Josée, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
Li, Cheng, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution
Mundie, Craig J., Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
Orszag, Peter R., Vice Chairman, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
Perle, Richard N., Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Rockefeller, David, Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank
Rose, Charlie, Executive Editor and Anchor, Charlie Rose
Rubin, Robert E., Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Secretary of the Treasury
Schmidt, Eric, Executive Chairman, Google Inc.
Steinberg, James B., Deputy Secretary of State
Thiel, Peter A., President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC
Varney, Christine A., Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
Vaupel, James W., Founding Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Warsh, Kevin, Former Governor, Federal Reserve Board
Wolfensohn, James D., Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC

See full list, all countries, here.

More info here.

American Foundations - SarahPac

Thomas Jefferson - A Remarkable Man

This is amazing. There are two parts. Be sure to read the 2nd part (in RED).

Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in life and never stopped.

At 5, began studying under his cousin's tutor.

At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.

At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.

At 16, entered the College of William and Mary.

At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.

At 23, started his own law practice.

At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.

At 31, wrote the widely circulated "Summary View of the Rights of British America " and retired from his law practice.

At 32, was a Delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence .

At 33, took three years to revise Virginia 's legal code and wrote a Public Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.

At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia succeeding Patrick Henry.

At 40, served in Congress for two years.

At 41, was the American minister to France and negotiated commercial treaties with European nations along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.

At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.

At 53, served as Vice President and was elected president of the American Philosophical Society.

At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions and became the active head of Republican Party.

At 57, was elected the third president of the United States.

At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase doubling the nation's size.

At 61, was elected to a second term as President.

At 65, retired to Monticello.

At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.

At 81, almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia and served as its first president.

At 83, died on the 50th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence along with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson knew because he himself studied the previous failed attempts at government. He understood actual history, the nature of God, his laws and the nature of man. That happens to be way more than what most understand today. Jefferson really knew his stuff. 


A voice from the past to lead us in the future:  John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: "This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe ." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."-- Thomas Jefferson

"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." -- Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." -- Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."-- Thomas Jefferson

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."