News for 07/10/2009- Autos, Traitors, Treaties and Truth
Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs “to put nothing in writing, ever” regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner’s conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner “intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards.” Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in a policy negotation concerning a major federal policy change could be viewed as a criminal act. Sensenbrenner also wants a congressional investigation of why a global warming study by Alan Carlin, an EPA economist who is a career civil servant, was suppressed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other senior agency officials. The study warned of seriously damaging economic consequences for small businesses if the agency moved to regulate CO2 gases as illegal emissions under the Clean Air Act. The CO2 gases, which are also produced by humans and other air-breathing creatures when they exhale, are viewed by global warming activists as contributing to the trapping of heat in the atmosphere when carbon-based fuels like oil and coal are burned.
Electric Cars May Shift Our Foriegn Dependence from One Dictator To Another from IBD
http://www.ibdeditori…
The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%… Aside from forcing us into less-safe downsized vehicles that increased highway fatalities, the promise of more miles per gallon caused people to drive more miles. The promised energy independence never materialized in the 70′s as we imported more foreign oil than ever before. Okay, so how about a zero-emission source of electricity — nuclear power? The administration has done little to promote it and recently killed the safest place on the planet to store what is erroneously called nuclear waste — at the nuclear repository that was being built at Yucca Mountain, Nev. This “waste” is in the form of spent fuel rods the French and others have safely stored and reprocessed. These rods still contain most of their original energy and reprocessing them makes nuclear power renewable as well as pollution-free. The French get 80% of their electricity from nukes. There are the hazards of the cars themselves, to drivers, passengers and first responders. Then there’s a whole new problem of disposing of a new generation of batteries using lithium. As for the lithium, Bolivia, under the thumb of its leftist leader Evo Morales, has about half the world’s proven reserves. “The United States has supplies of lithium, but if demand for lithium exceeded domestic supplies,” warns the GAO, “the U.S. could substitute reliance on one foreign source (oil) for another (lithium).”
Lindsay Grahm May Support Sotomayor – Drop him an email at http://lgraham.senate… and tell him he is a traitor!
‘The only way she can get derailed is if she performs poorly next week,” acknowledged Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Senate Judiciary Committee member. He said he was still undecided, but added, “I honestly think I could vote for her.” (Ed note- so apparently reverse discrimination and activist judges are no problem for Lindsay Graham)
Obama’s Ambitious U.N. Treaty Agenda By Cliff Kincaid
…Senate Democrats have another vote for the U.N.’s Law of Sea Treaty, and there are strong indications that they intend to bring this controversial document up for a vote within days or weeks. Those who favor the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) believe that U.S. security lies in passing a treaty and hiring more lawyers to defend America before an international tribunal, rather than building more ships for the Navy and Coast Guard. The anticipated vote on the treaty follows a strong recent push for ratification from the Council on Foreign Relations and newspaper ads in favor of the treaty from the Pew Charitable Trusts, a $5 billion non-profit entity. Plus, the Obama State Dept. sent a document to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 11 that declared UNCLOS to be a top priority for the administration. In fact, Obama’s submission to the Foreign Relations Committee names 17 treaties that he wants ratified. So rather than build more ships, we will depend on a piece of paper from the U.N. to safeguard U.S. national security.
Time to De-Centralize American Power By JB Williams
..The United States of America has officially reached the moment in history when the centralized power vested in 546 career politicians no longer serves the best interests of more than 300 million legal American citizens. The federal government no longer exists at the pleasure of the states and their people, but rather as a dysfunctional global dictatorship, an oligarchy of 546 career political thugs ruling with an iron fist over 300 million dissenting subjects. The Founding Fathers knew that this day would come and they prepared accordingly. “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, [life, liberty and the individual freedom to define and pursue happiness] it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” – Declaration of Independence. The real power of the people is not in their vote or even the money they send politicians at election time. It’s in their ability to use their local state legislators to force the Fed back into compliance with the contract between the states, the Constitution… If you want your country back, you will have to take it back. (Ed note.. 39 states, including Michigan now have sovereignty legislation pending)
Former Acorn Employee Rethinking It’s Value by Kevin Mooney
MonCrief is a former employee of ACORN and Project Vote affiliate who offered testimony last year in Harrisburg, Pa. as part of an election law suit filed against them. “I’ve always been an outsider in my party because I ask a lot of questions and I didn’t like some of the answers I’ve been getting,” she said. “The problem I have with Democrats is that they promise you the world but then they don’t deliver. I identify now with conservative ideas because the answer is not social welfare. The answer instead comes from being less dependent on the government and keeping families together.” Food stamp and housing assistance programs, for instance, do not provide people with an incentive to get married and to keep husbands and wives together, she said.
News for 07/08/09
Barney Frank: Let’s spend TARP profits before taxpayers can get them by Byron York at the Washington Examiner
http://www.washington…
The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Frank introduced the “TARP for Main Street Act,” a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats. Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program “shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.” Frank, however, wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything…..
ACORN’s “Muscle for Money” does the bidding of SEIU By Kevin Mooney at the Washington Examiner
http://www.washington…
Corporate and political officials who defy workplace and community organizers risk being made objects of scorn by bright red-clad protestors in public and private, courtesy of an activist union and its close allies in the nation’s most controversial liberal non-profit advocacy group. It’s officially called the “Muscle for Money” program within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) where it was started, and unofficially by the same name among activists of Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). Muscle for Money includes multiple techniques for creating highly aggressive, organized efforts both to pressure businesses and officials to support the activists’ agenda or to discredit and intimidate opponents of their agenda, according to present and former ACORN members.
Obama Adviser Says U.S. Should Mull Second Stimulus By Shamim Adam at Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg….
July 7 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President.
The Demise of Newspapers is a Relative Observation by Matt Welch at Reason (Re:RUMOR”S OF ANOTHER BAILOUT RECIPIENT)
http://reason.com/blo…
In the year of their widely reported death, American newspapers were still making money like oil companies (averaging 12-15%). Which is a relevant observation to consider before we re-think the First Amendment, re-write copyright law to favor newspapers over citizens, dole out corporate subsidies and targeted tax breaks, launch a journalisim stimulus, mimic the European model, sic the FTC on the problem, let John Kerry anywhere near the levers of legislation, or any of the scores of other damn-fool ideas we’ve seen floated this year alone. Follow up article at The Minority Report http://tinyurl.com/nl…
When they, as gatekeepers to the news, find themselves becoming irrelevant, the natural inclination of their kind is to look to government to reinstate their relevance. They see the Fifth Estate as a co-equal branch of the government — and a government paycheck would cement that perception in the minds of the public. That would not be a good thing for our Republic, or for those who still hold some reverence for the United States Constitution.
Judicial Sleight of Hand By Brittany Fortier of AIM
http://www.aim.org/br…
Judge David Hamilton of the Southern District of Indiana, who has been nominated by the Obama administration to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, proposes to bring an even more activist approach to the federal judiciary. For example, in A Woman’s Choice v. Newman, Hamilton issued an injunction against an Indiana law requiring abortion clinics to give women information about alternatives to abortion and requiring an 18-hour waiting period before obtaining an abortion, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., points out. He called Hamilton’s ruling “questionable,” while the Seventh Circuit characterized Hamilton’s ruling as “an abuse of discretion.” In Hinrichs v. Bosma, in which the Judge enjoined the Chaplain of Indiana’s House of Representatives from invoking the name of Jesus Christ during prayers offered at official proceedings but later decreed that invoking the name of Allah was nonsectarian, Sen. Inhofe added. Inhofe described this ruling as “extremely naive and dangerous.” According to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), “Despite an American Bar Association (ABA) rating of ‘not qualified,’ Hamilton was confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana by the Senate on October 7, 1994.” ACLJ notes that the ABA changed their rating of Hamilton to “well qualified” more recently when Hamilton was nominated to the Seventh Circuit.
Gallup sees more Americans moving right By Mark Tapscott at Washington Examiner
http://tinyurl.com/lx…
Gallup is out today with a new survey showing more Americans are moving to the Right politically than to the Left, including people in all three major groups, Republicans, Independents and Democrats. “Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven’t changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left, ” the polling organization said in a special report released earlier today.The latest Gallup results also come soon after the organization reported that 40 percent of Americans now identify themselves as conservatives, the highest level since 2004. In a masterful piece of understatement, the unnamed author of the Gallup announcement of its specia report results offered this observation:The latest data also strongly suggest not only that the election results of 2006 and 2008 should be read as a stunning rejection of current Republican office-holders and spokesmen, but also that Democrats are wrong to read into those results a mandate for liberal change.
States, Employers Advance with E-Verify While Feds Continue to Obstruct Program at Fair US
http://www.fairus.org…
While states and employers steadily increase their use of E-Verify — the federal program that allows employers to verify the work eligibility of their new hires — the Obama Administration and congressional leadership appear to be undermining the popular and effective program.
