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Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950′s for the sake of the kids, but the whole of the 2008 election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:
–Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

–We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.
–You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
–Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
–We’ll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel.
–You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

–We’ll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
–You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps users, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.
–We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks.
–We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .

–You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.
–You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

–We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.
–You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McLaine. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

–We’ll keep the SUV’s, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

–You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.
–We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
–We’ll keep “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “The National Anthem.”
–I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute “Imagine”, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, “Kum Ba Ya” or “We Are the World”.

–We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

–Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, Jane Fonda, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid with you.

P.S.S. And you won’t have to press 1 for English when you call our country

George Soros strikes Again

Hawker-Beechcraft Denied Big Air Force Contract in Favor of Brazilian Company With Soros Connections

By Gary P Jackson

Hawker-Beechcraft AT-6

*Update: Hawker-Beechcraft sues to block Embraer’s Air Force Contract

By Gary P Jackson

Here’s a little something that caught my eye today. It seems after investing around $100 million in this project, Hawker-Beechcraft has been excluded from a contract, worth almost $1 billion, to build a new light air support plane.

What intrigues me is the Brazilian company Embraer, the likely contract winner, is currently under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Justice Department, for possible violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

According to Financial Times, Embraer is “venturing into the defense industry” and “is one of a select few Brazilian companies that has managed to break out of the Latin American market and compete on a global scale

You can read more about the corruption investigation here.

Here’s what the Wichita Eagle is reporting:

Hawker Beechcraft Corp. says the Air Force has informed the company that it lost out on a military contract worth nearly $1 billion.

The company had hoped to win the Light Air Support contract with its AT-6, an armed version of its T-6 trainer. But on Friday, the company said it received a letter from the Air Force saying the AT-6 had been excluded from the competition. The company wants an explanation.

According to the company’s news release: “The letter provides no basis for the exclusion. We are both confounded and troubled by this decision, as we have been working closely with the Air Force for two years and, with our partners Lockheed Martin, CMC Esterline, Pratt & Whitney Canada, L-3 WESCAM and CAE, have invested more than $100 million preparing to meet the Air Force’s specific requirements.”

The piston planes are designed for counterinsurgency, close air support, armed overwatch and homeland security.

Hawker Beechcraft said it continues to believe the AT-6 is the most capable, affordable and sustainable aircraft in the competition based on the Air Force’s specifications. The company has said that winning the award would have kept its T-6 production line running after 2015. The company has said that 1,400 employees in 20 states – including 800 at Hawker Beechcraft in Wichita – work on the AT-6 and T-6 programs at the company and its U.S. suppliers and partners.

The company said Friday that it had no further comment, for now.

The decision appears to leave the field open to the Super Tucano built by Brazil’s Embraer for the initial contract to supply 35 with the potential for 55 aircraft worth up to $950 million. And that doesn’t include foreign sales.

The Air Force’s move surprised aircraft industry analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group.

They seemed to be the front runner for the contract,” he said of Hawker. “They had the most infrastructure spread over the most states and the most political support.”

He said the loss is not critical to the company’s survival, but it would have been a great boost to maintaining work and workers as the company’s T-6 contract runs down.

The challenge is to build for the military market until the civil market comes back,” Aboulafia said. “And nobody knows when the civil market will come back, probably some time next year, but there’s no guarantee.”

Analyst Wayne Plucker, industry manager for aerospace at Frost & Sullivan, downplayed the importance of the contract to the company.

It might lead to more layoffs and other adjustments internally, but I don’t think it significantly affects them as a going concern,” he said. “They just need to find another product niche.”

He said the Super Tucano was built specifically for this kind of mission, while the AT-6 is an adaption that wasn’t perfect. Embraer has struggled to sell enough of the planes so it has priced them very aggressively.

U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, said in an e-mailed statement that he was disappointed by the decision..

I have already demanded answers from the Pentagon on why they made this very unfortunate decision, and will continue to do so,” he wrote. “This contract is critical both to our nation’s security and to jobs in Wichita, Kansas.”

The Obama regime sure seems to favor Brazil for some reason. It may be the fact Obama’s boss, George Soros, has many investments there. As we know, Obama gave the Soros owned Brazilian oil giant Petrobas $10 billion a couple years back, just days after Soros bought controlling interest in the company.

Whitney Pitcher found more about the connection between Petrobas, and Obama’s repeated efforts to stifle American oil exploration. Obama has told the Brazilian leaders he wants America to be their best customer for oil.

Doing some research it seems George Soros has a connection to Embraer through Harbin-Embraer Aircraft a Chinese-Brazilian joint venture, and Hainan Airlines, which Soros owns a significant stake in.

Not sure what to make of this.

By all accounts, both Hawker-Beechcraft and Embraer have a great aircraft that would fit the requirements for the mission. The Hawker is a converted trainer, while Embraer is mission specific, and already in service in Latin America.

The purpose-built aspect vs an older, reconfigured design may have been the deciding factor, with nothing sinister going on behind the scenes.

It’s troubling, however, that Hawker-Beechcraft was given no real explanation for this decision. It’s also troubling we’d buy a military aircraft from a foreign manufacturer, under any circumstances. As bad as Americans need jobs, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Never mind the national security factor.

This may be a legit deal, but Congress needs to look into this, especially since Embraer is already under investigation for corrupt practices, likely pay-offs and bribes. [Though I am only speculating here.]

Hopefully this will be examined further, and before any money changes hands.

NEW WORLD ORDER AWARDS WALTER CRONKITE

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Here is VIDEO PROOF that Hillary wants a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT. She is in favor of a NORTH AMERICAN UNION where we are all slaves of her friends, the super-rich evil people who control our government. If we vote her into office we are in big trouble.

HOW MANY OF THESE GEORGE SOROS COMMANDMENTS FOR OBAMA IN 2011 ARE NOW TRUE.

George Soros – 15 Commandments for his puppet Barak Obama

Soros’s answer to America’s transformation involve more regulation and more government intervention in the marketplace. Soros pours billions of dollars into the following and commands Obama to perform.
1.) Promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
2.) Promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
3.) Opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
4.) Depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
5.) Promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws
6.) Promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes
7.) Promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens
8.) Defending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abettors
9.) Financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
10.) Advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending
11.) Opposing the death penalty in all circumstances
12.) Promoting socialized medicine in the United States
13.) Promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is “not clean air and clean water, [but] rather … the demolition of technological/industrial civilization”
14.) Bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations
15.) Promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike
Financial Crisis
While the rest of the world financial markets were losing billions of dollars, Soros made billions of dollars for which he said, [he's] “having a very good crisis.” Some people speculate that Soros was responsible for the crisis by removing his large sums of money from institutions and betting against currency valuations.

George Soros Goal for the United States;
Creating a monetary crisis by uncontrolled spending by the Government to devalue the dollar thereby creating an opportunity for Soros to buy cheap dollars and when recovery comes – cashing out with multiple trillions. Leaving the rest of us to pay for the loss.

 

Soros army launches Wall Street assault of its own MoveOn.org action campaign aims to rebuild U.S. financial system

Posted: October 23, 2011
12:00 am Eastern By Aaron Klein 
© 2011 WND

 

MoveOn.org is planning to launch a protest movement of its own to compliment the Occupy Wall Street momentum with the stated goal of “make[ing] Wall Street pay” and rebuilding the entire U.S. financial system.

MoveOn.org is funded by the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Another grantee of Tides is the Adbusters magazine, which is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

The new MoveOn.org Wall Street campaign serves as further evidence suggesting the anti-Wall Street movement is a well-planned campaign and not the spontaneous uprising its leaders claim.

“Red Army: The Radical Network that must be defeated to save America” exposes the extremists behind Occupy Wall Street along with the radical socialist network that seized political power in Washington over decades, shaped Obama’s presidential agenda and threatens the very future of the U.S.

WND broke the story last weekthat Fenton Communications, a public relations firm closely partnered with Tides, represented the anti-Wall Street march past millionaires’ homes in New York two weeks ago.

Fenton also crafted the public-relations strategy of MoveOn.org, as well as a who’s who of far-left causes, organizations and activists, from Soros himself to Health Care for America Now to a litany of anti-war groups.

Today, MoveOn.org is holding a planning meeting in Manhattan to discuss ways to take on Wall Street in coordination with Occupy Wall Street.

An email sent to Moveon.org’s mailing list announced a “meeting for folks to come together to plan ways to Make Wall Street Pay in our own communities”

“We’ll focus on specific targeted campaigns that hold the big banks accountable,” continued the email.

Continued the email: “The Occupy Wall Street movement has put economic justice in the spotlight. The whole country is talking about how we can end the big banks’ excessive influence and Make Wall Street Pay to rebuild the economy for everyone.”

The email spelled out the new MoveOn campaign’s connection to Occupy Wall Street:

“How is this connected to Occupy Wall Street? Our goal is to launch targeted local campaigns to complement the amazing work being done by brave Occupy Wall Street protesters – something MoveOn members around the country have been assking for. And we’ll continue to do everything we can to support and stand in solidarity with #Occupy.”

Proof! Occupy Wall Street no ‘spontaneous movement’

MoveOn.org is funded by Tides, which acts like a massive clearinghouse of donations to a slew of liberal groups. Critics have alleged the center acts to obscure the ultimate sources of donations by collecting significant sums of money from a few large donors and then funneling the money to thousands of liberal causes.

Soros’ Open Society Institute is a prominent Tides Center donor, giving the group $3.5 million between 2007 and 2009 alone.

The Occupy Wall Street march past millionaires’ homes was first announced in a press release entitled, “Community Groups and Progressive Organizations Join Together to Plan ‘Millionaires March’ with Occupy Wall Street Protestors.”

The release detailed how a group calling itself 99 New York was joining the Occupy Wall Street movement as a partner. The 99 organization is purportedly a coalition of unions and community organizations, such as UnitedNY, Strong Economy for All Coalition, N.Y. Communities for Change, and the Working Families Party.

It was the 99 New York group, which claims to represent the will of 99 percent of the U.S. population, that led last week’s Occupy Wall Street march down the streets of New York.

The press release was sent to reporters and was also posted in various Occupy Wall Street affiliated websites, including StrongForAll.org.

The release listed contact information for 99 New York’s spokesmen: Doug Forand of Red Horse Strategies, a firm that has represented scores of Democrat politicians; and Doug Gordon, senior vice president of Fenton Communications.

Gordon’s Fenton email was provided on the release. Prior to joining Fenton, Gordon worked for years on Capitol Hill and in Democratic politics. He spent seven years as the top aide to Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich.

Soros, Fenton, Tides

Fenton Communications was founded in 1982 by David Fenton, an activist who served as a photographer for Bill Ayers’ domestic Weather Underground terror group.

Fenton Communications works in conjunction with the Soros-funded Tides Center that funded Adbusters, which was reported to have started the concept of Occupy Wall Street.

Fenton used the Tides Center to set up Environmental Media Services in 1994. Tides reportedly originally ran EMS’ daily operations.

David Fenton serves on the board of numerous Tides-funded groups, while his firm represents more than 30 Tides Center grantees, as well as Soros himself and the billionaire’s Open Society Institute. Fenton helped to craft Moveon.org’s attacks on Gen. David Petraeus.

An example of the close public relations relationship between Fenton and Tides is the Social Venture Network, which was established and operates as a project of the Tides Foundation, while its strategy is represented by Fenton. SVN’s board has included Tides’ founder Drummond Pike as well as Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink.

Another group, September Eleventh Families For Peaceful Tomorrows, is an antiwar organization founded by individuals who lost loved ones in 9-11 terrorist attacks. The group’s campaign was coordinated by Fenton while the group was funded by Tides.

Also represented by Fenton is the Win Without War group, which was funded by Soros and Tides.

WND found more than 30 recent examples of Tides grantees whose strategy was coordinated by Fenton.

Fenton, Obama, Ayers ties

While David Fenton first photographed Ayers in the 1960s, he later served alongside both Ayers and Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit which channeled money to a slew of progressive groups, including the Tides Center and the Alinsky-style Midwest Academy training outfit. Obama served as a paid director on the Woods Fund board from 1999 to 2002.

WND recently reported Midwest’s founder, Heather Booth, has been training unions on how to use the economic crisis.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin, an arm of Booth’s Midwest Academy, is part of the Moving Wisconsin Forward movement, one of the main organizers of the major Wisconsin protests in February, as WND first reported.

Fenton’s managing director, Ira Arlook, also served as director of Booth’s Citizens Action.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

Read more:Soros army launches Wall Street assault of its ownhttp://www.wnd.com/?pageId=359233#ixzz1bbnhw2jw

THE GOVERNMENT TOOK MY PRIMATENE MIST AWAY – MORE NANNY, NANNY

If you have asthma and rely on an over-the-counter inhaler, you’ll need to switch a prescription-only alternative by 2012 as part of the federal government‘s latest attempt to protect the Earth’s atmosphere. And this switch will probably cost you.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products but has since been removed from many.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.

 

Phasing out of epinephrine inhalers began in 2008. Watch this 2010 FDA video about the process:

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Right now there is only one OTC inhaler on the market — Armstrong Pharmaceutical’s Primatene mist. Other manufacturers have already switched to the more environmentally-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane. Both types of inhalers offer quick-relief to symptoms like shortness of breath and chest tightness. The inhalers containing hydrofluoroalkane are only available via prescription.

“If you rely on an over-the-counter inhaler to relieve your asthma symptoms, it is important that you contact a health care professional to talk about switching to a different medicine to treat your asthma,” said Badrul Chowdhury, FDA’s director of pulmonary drug division.

 

Chowdhury told reporters and doctors via teleconference that “in the worst case scenario we are looking at 1 to 2 million people using” Primatene, adding that most of those patients likely use multiple medications to treat their asthma.

 

NPR writes that the company’s label has been notifying users of the phase out. The action is part of an agreement signed in 1987 by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

 

‘Agenda 21′ Now in Effect!

Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.
George H. Bush

 

Agenda 21 isn’t coming. It is here. Most don’t know about it. They’ve never heard of it, but it is creeping in the back door right now. So, look behind you. It may already be in your backyard.

What is Agenda 21? It is a United Nation’s program presented and approved in Rio in 1992. At that time American conservatives laughed it off. “This is too crazy,” they said. “Impossible. It will never happen. Not here!” Well, it is happening. It is happening here and it is happening now. Agenda 21 is a totalitarian comprehensive environmental program that, when fully implemented, will direct where you live, how much water you can use, and how and where you can travel.

Agenda 21 is being marketed as a worldwide effort to ensure that all human beings will have access to adequate housing, health care, water and food. Of course this will require a massive redistribution of wealth from prosperous countries to poorer countries. Predictably, capitalistic countries, like the United States, will suffer lower standards of living.

It’s noteworthy that Presidents George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, through Executive Orders, have signed onto Agenda 21. Hundreds more governors, mayors, and county commissioners have also signed on.

Agenda 21 and related programs will eliminate many things we hold dear. These have been declared “unsustainable” and will be abolished. Here are some of them:

  1. All private property rights (property ownership)
  2. All forms of irrigation, pesticides & commercial fertilizer
  3. Livestock production and most meat consumption
  4. Privately owned vehicles and personal travel
  5. Use of fossil fuels for power generation or mechanized travel
  6. Single family homes
  7. Most forms of mineral extraction and timber harvesting
  8. Human population must be reduced to fewer than 1 billion people

It’s not coming from Washington D.C. or state legislatures for the most part. It is seeping in through local city and county governments. Agenda 21 brings with it stealthy code words, comforting words such as “smart growth,” “social justice,” “bio-diversity,” and “sustained development.” You will hear them often. Translated these terms effectively mean total environmental dictatorship and the elevation of the pagan practice of the worship of Mother Earth. Not a joke.

179 countries, including the United States, initially signed on to the Agenda in 1992. Many more have joined since then. It is already in progress in 600 U.S. cities. You can check the list of committed countries and cities at: http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=11454. You can also read the specific programs being implemented.

Agenda 21 is designed to control every aspect of human life on every square inch of planet earth. As a biblical worldview dims in the world man falls to the bottom of the food chain.

If Agenda 21 succeeds animals will become more important than man as will plants and trees. We can already see ample evidence of this process in motion today. Agenda 21’s real message is: “Man is the problem. Nature must be preserved and take precedence. Mother Earth must not be scratched.“

Agenda 21 is just another attempt by man to recreate heaven on earth. David Chilton, in his insightful bookParadise Restored, presents an important historical dynamic. Chilton submits that man, ever since he was expelled from Eden, has tried to get back in. Each time he tries, he creates another hell on earth. Agenda 21 will be no different.

Many socialistic, communistic, and liberal organizations and international leaders are behind Agenda 21 and its related programs. It will take dedication of time and effort on our part to truly understand all the implications of this pervasive program. The investment of time will be worth it.

I encourage you, no, beg you, to learn of this Agenda. Take the time. Think of the world your children will inherit if we don’t stop it and similar assaults on our freedoms.  Do not make the mistake of writing this off as some conspiracy theory. It may or may not be a conspiracy, but it is not a theory. It’s here. Look behind you.

 

 

OBAMA SAYS TO ALL MEXICANS – JUST WALK ACROSS THE BORDER – WE WILL NOT DEPORT YOU

WE WILL GIVE YOU A WORK PERMIT AND MAKE SURE YOU VOTE FOR BARAK. COME TAKE THE JOBS OF OUR CITIZENS – IT’S ALRIGHT – PUT OUR POPULATION UNEMPLOYMENT TO AT LEAST 22% – GEORGE SOROS WANTS TO EXTEND THE CRISES AND THE DOWN FALL OF THE USA.

YOU’ALL COME AND IF YOU DON’T KILL ANYONE – YOU CAN STAY

FORGET ABOUT OUR CITIZENS THAT ARE LOOKING FOR JOBS – LET THE ILLEGALS TAKE THOSE JOBS. FORGET ABOUT THE BLACK CAUCUS – THEY CAN GET WELFARE AND MORE FOOD STAMPS.

GEORGE SOROS WANTED OPEN BORDERS – IT IS HERE. 

The government will stop deporting illegal immigrants who are not a public safety threat and permit them to work in the country legally, the Obama administration announced Thursday. A new federal group will review the 300,000 backlogged deportation cases with an eye toward prosecuting criminals and other high-priority cases. But authorities will effectively close the cases of many upstanding high school and college students who were brought here illegally, military veterans, and adults with no criminal record and strong family ties to the United States.

Janet Napolitano redefines Crime – Being in the country illegally is a civil violation, but not a crime. Napolitano said that for the first time in history and as a result of Secure Communities, half the immigrants deported nationwide last year were criminals, and most of the others were repeat violators of immigration laws. The new policy announced Thursday, she said, will help put even more focus on deporting convicted criminals.

She is incorrect – it is a crime! It is Time for the states to step up and deport the entire group of criminal illegal’s.

 

The Obama Socialist Regime Wants to Change the Way Farmers Farm

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Cowboy Byte

The Obama regime wants to change the way farmers farm. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, has proposed reclassifying all farm vehicles as Commercial Motor Vehicles. Farmers would be required to obtain Commercial Drivers Licenses” for their tractors and their combines out in the fields, not on public property. “If the rule goes into effect, anybody who operates any motorized farm equipment will have to pass the same rigorous tests that semi drivers do. They’ll have to fill out the same, highly detailed forms and daily logs. American farmers would have to keep track of how many hours they work and sleep, how many miles their vehicles travel.

They’d have to display Department of Transportation numbers — and, of course, they’d have to pay the government fees for all these new burdens. In one fell swoop, the regime would have more regulatory control over farmers and their 800,000 vehicles.

Riots and flash mobs have root causes that government can’t reach.

The Wall Street Journal         AUGUST 13, 2011

 

Après le Déluge, What?

  • By PEGGY NOONAN

 

The riots in Britain left some Americans shaken. In the affluence of the past 40 years, and with the rise of the jumbo jet, we became a nation of travelers. We have been to England, visited a lot of those neighborhoods. They were peaceful; now they’re in flames. But something else raised our unease as we followed the story on TV and on the Net. I think there was a ping on the national radar. We saw something over there that in smaller ways we’re starting to see over here.

The British press, left, right and center, was largely united in a refusal to make political excuses for the violence. Almost all agreed on the cause and nature of what happened. The cause was not injustice; this was not a revolt of the downtrodden masses, breaking into stores looking for food. The causes were greed, selfishness, a respect and even lust for violence, and a lack of moral grounding. Conscienceless predators preyed upon the weak. The weak were anyone who happened to be passing by, and those, many of them immigrants, who tried to defend their shops and neighborhoods. The iconic scene was the 20-year-old college student in East London who was beaten for his bicycle and fell bloody to the ground. His tormentors, with a sadistic imitation of gentleness, helped him up. Then they rifled through his backpack to get his phone and wallet. It was cruelty out of Dickens. It was Bill Sikes with a million YouTube hits.

The denunciations were swift and fierce. Max Hastings, in the conservative-populist Daily Mail: “The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. . . . Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. . . . Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.”

In the left-tilting Guardian, youth worker Shaun Bailey called the rioters opportunists. “Young people have been looting the shops they like: JD Sports and mobile phone shops have been hit, yet Waterstone’s [a bookstore] has been left alone. These young people like trainers [sneakers] and iPhones; they are less interested in books. This is criminality in a raw form, not politics.”

 

ZUMAPRESSA well known local gang in Normanton, Derby wears scarves and hoods to protect their identity.

noonan0813

In the right-leaning Telegraph, Allison Pearson asked: “Where are the parents?” She told of a friend who’d called a mother to tell her her son was out and acting up. The mother yelled at her for calling at 2:15 a.m. “The adults are afraid and the children, emboldened by adult timidity, are fearless.”

More stinging and resigned was the brief essay by Theodore Dalrymple in the intellectually bracing City Journal. The subject—the decline of Western society—has been his for 20 years. He has written what he saw as a doctor working in British prisons. “The ferocious criminality exhibited by an uncomfortably large section of the English population” in the riots did not surprise him. “To have spotted it required no great perspicacity on my part; rather, it took a peculiar cowardly blindness, one regularly displayed by the British intelligentsia and political class, not to see it and not to realize its significance.”

At fault in the riots were the distorting effects of the welfare state and a degenerate British popular culture: “A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice.” Much of what they have is provided by others, but they are not grateful: dependency doesn’t encourage gratitude but resentment.

***

What does this have to do with America? What we’re seeing on the streets in Britain right now is something we may be starting to see here. It hasn’t come together in a conflagration, but it is out there, and I think it’s growing. And as in Britain, it doesn’t have anything to do with political grievances per se.

Philadelphia right now is under curfew because of “flash mobs.” Young people send out the word on social media, and suddenly dozens or hundreds of them hit a targeted store, steal everything on the shelves, and run, knowing no one will stop them or catch them. It’s happened in other cities, too. Sometimes the mobs beat people up on the street and take their money. There are the beat-downs in McDonald’s, where the young lose all control and the old fear to intervene. There were the fights and attacks last weekend at the Wisconsin State Fair. You’ve seen the YouTubes of fights on the subways. You often see links to these stories on Drudge: He headlines them “Les Miserables.”

Some of these young people come from brokenness, shallowness and terror, and are bringing those things into the world with them. Here are some statistics of what someone last week called a new lost generation. In 2009, the last year for which census data are available, there were 74 million children under 18. Of that number, 20 million live in single-parent families, often with only an overwhelmed mother or a beleaguered grandmother. Over 700,000 children under 18 have been the subject of reports of abuse. More than a quarter million are foster children.

These numbers suggest the making—or the presence—of a crisis.

Some of these youngsters become miracle children. In spite of the hand they were dealt, they learn to be constructive, successful, givers to life. But many, we know, do not. Some will wind up on YouTube.

The normal, old response to an emerging problem such as this has been: The government has to do something. We must start a program, create an agency to address juvenile delinquency. But governments are tapped out, cutting back, trying to avoid bankruptcy. Which means we can’t even take refuge in the illusion that government can solve the problem. The churches of America have always helped the young, stepping in where they can. That will continue. But they too are hard-pressed these days.

Where does that leave us? In a hard place, knowing in our guts that a lot of troubled kids are coming up, and not knowing what to do about it. The problem, at bottom, is love, something we never talk about in public policy discussions because it’s too soft and can’t be quantified or legislated. But little children without love and guidance are afraid. They’re terrified—they have nothing solid in the world, which is a pretty scary place. So they never feel safe. As they grow, their fear becomes rage. Further on, the rage can be expressed in violence. This is especially true of boys, but it’s increasingly true of girls.

What’s needed can’t be provided by government. When the riot begins or the flash mob arrives, the best the government can do is control the streets, enforce the law, maintain the peace.

After that, what? Britain is about to face that question. We’ll likely have to face it, too.

Obama’s New Gifts to Organized Labor

 

A union election is a decisive event in an employee’s life, and new rules limit the information employees get before voting.

The Wall street Journal      August 9, 2011

By EUGENE SCALIA

Government encroachments typically come as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Justice Antonin Scalia once observed, but occasionally they are brazen—then, the “wolf comes as a wolf.” The Obama administration recently proposed a pair of rules to help unions win workplace elections. One rule is obviously a wolf. The other is a pretty creepy looking sheep.

The “wolf” is a proposal of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enable unions to force organizing elections with as little as 10 days’ notice. Critical issues governing the election—such as which employees may vote—would be determined in a hearing just a week after the union petitions for a vote.

The company, which often will not even know a labor lawyer, would also have one week to prepare a hearing statement addressing such arcana as “the Board’s jurisdiction to process the petition; the appropriateness of the petitioned-for unit; . . . [and] the existence of any bar to the election.” In the same week, the company would have to learn its rights and responsibilities under the labor laws, prepare for the hearing and launch its campaign for the upcoming election. Oh—it has a business to run too.

And the union? Its business is organizing. Often, paid organizers have been working behind the scenes for months, awaiting the opportune moment to spring their election demand.

The day before the NLRB proposed its election-blitz rule, the Department of Labor proposed a rule to further hobble companies’ response to union organizing. The department’s rule concerns the circumstances where employers, and firms they hire to “persuade” employees on union matters, must disclose that relationship in government filings. Congress created an exception to the disclosure requirement if outside firms “advise” the company, rather than “persuading” its workers. Labor’s proposal sharply limits that exception. Disclosure now would be required, for instance, when a lawyer suggests changes to material the company has written to distribute to employees.

Businesses always are reluctant to make governmental filings about the purpose and terms of their relationships. That’s particularly so when sensitive strategic and legal matters are involved—and when misfiling could result in criminal sanctions. And so, the Labor Department rule is dressed in the innocent garb of “disclosure.” But its intent is to pressure experts and companies to curb the services they offer and seek—in order to avoid federal filing obligations—just as the NLRB rule increases a company’s need for experts to quickly counter the unions’ inherent organizing expertise.

An irony to the NLRB’s move to expedite union elections is that these already are among the fastest legal proceedings known to man. In 2010, according to the NLRB’s acting general counsel, the median time to an organizing election after the union petitioned was 38 days, and “95.1% of all initial representation elections were conducted within 56 days.” By contrast, a federal court case—which often is less decisive to a company’s future than unionization—takes a median of seven and a half months, not counting appeal. A defendant has 21 days to file an answer, a deadline that’s commonly extended.

A union election is a decisive event in an employee’s life too—and the new rules would limit the information employees get before voting. While union organizers will have had months to bend workers’ ears (and arms), the company gets just a few days to prepare and communicate its message. That means employees have limited opportunity to get the company’s perspective on what a union means for its cost structure and competitiveness.

Both proposals are cut from the same cloth as the dubiously titled Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) from two years ago, which effectively would have eliminated secret-ballot elections for unions. EFCA failed to pass Congress because it was not just manifestly unfair, it was undemocratic. The secret ballot is integral to an election worthy of the name. And so is a campaign in advance to educate voters. Are companies’ statements necessarily more truthful than unions’? No. But to quote Justice Brennan (who quoted Judge Learned Hand), through the First Amendment we have “staked . . . our all” upon the belief that “right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues.”

President Obama—an avowed civil libertarian and former voting-rights professor—can’t be feeling proud about a pair of rules meant to change election outcomes by limiting speech and helping one side get a jump on the other. But unions are a financial bedrock of the Democratic Party. And private-sector unions are in sharp decline—6.9% of the work force, compared to nearly 21% in 1978. The president’s allies may figure that helping unions win their elections is essential if unions are to help the president win his.

The problem with that calculus is that the administration has spent much of the year attempting to show businesses that it’s their ally and a foe of unreasonable, onerous new regulations. That message is sharply undercut by a pair of proposed rules that overnight could subject thriving businesses to blitzkrieg union elections for which they have scant ability to prepare.

Mr. Scalia, an attorney, was solicitor of labor under President George W. Bush.

YOUR US TAX DOLLARS ARE BUILDING MOSQUES OVERSEAS

CAN’T SOME ONE STOP THIS IMEDIATELY?

A debt plan passed that doesn’t cut debt or spending and now the Standard and Poors has lowered the US credit rating because they believe the plan failed to accomplish what was needed. The President continues to talk about increasing taxes on the wealthy and other politicians are looking at cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
All the while, the US State Department, headed by Secretary of State Hillary ‘Spendem’ Clinton is spending hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to repair and rebuild mosques in the Middle East. They are also providing internet service to Islamic Imans as seen in the following news report:
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The same State Department would not dare spend a penny on Christian churches or internet service for Christian pastors here in the US as it would be a violation of the supposed separation of church and state. Why are we spending our money on a religion that has vowed to destroy us when we have people in our own country that are losing their jobs and homes?

This is an outrage to the American people and we need to make our outrage known to our political leaders and tell them to take Clinton’s government checkbook away from her and her colleagues.

Read more: US Tax Dollars Building Mosques Overseas | Godfather Politics http://godfatherpolitics.com/412/us-tax-dollars-building-mosques-overseas/#ixzz1UT78fxz8

America’s debt downgrade is a damning indictment of President Obama’s Big Government disaster

 

By Nile Gardiner World 

The decision by credit agency Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years is a massive blow to the credibility of the Obama administration, and a damning indictment of its handling of the economy. No doubt the White House will pathetically try to blame the Bush Administration, Republicans in Congress, and of course its favourite target, the Tea Party, for the move by S&P. But without a shadow of a doubt, responsibility for the country’s financial mess and staggering levels of debt lie with the current US president and his administration. They have been in charge of running the economy for over 30 months, during which time the United States has witnessed an unprecedented increase in government spending and borrowing.

As the Congressional Budget Office revealed In January, the deficits generated under the Obama administration are the largest since the end of World War Two:

The deficits of $1.4 trillion in 2009 and $1.3 trillion in 2010 are, when measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), the largest since 1945—representing 10.0 percent and 8.9 percent of the nation’s output, respectively… Just two years ago, debt held by the public was less than $6 trillion, or about 40 percent of GDP; at the end of fiscal year 2010, such debt was roughly $9 trillion, or 62 percent of GDP.

The implications of this debt downgrade are extremely serious, not least with 46 percent of US Treasuries owned by foreigners. As The Wall Street Journal notes, the United States now has a score that ranks “below Liechtenstein and on par with Belgium and New Zealand”:

the move by S&P could serve as a psychological haymaker for an American economic recovery that can’t find much traction, and could do more damage to investors’ increasing lack of faith in a political system that is struggling to reach consensus on even everyday policy items. It could lead to the prompt downgrades of numerous companies and states, driving up their costs for borrowing. Policy makers are also anxious about the hidden icebergs the move could suddenly reveal. …. Lessons from other countries, such as Canada and Australia, suggest it can take years for a country to win back its AAA rating.

Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the United States has embarked on the most ambitious failed experiment in Washington meddling in US history. Huge increases in government spending, massive federal bailouts, growing regulations on businesses, thinly veiled protectionism, and the launch of a vastly expensive and deeply unpopular health care reform plan, have all combined to instill fear and uncertainty in the markets. Free enterprise has taken a backseat to continental European-style interventionism, as an intensely ideological left wing administration has sought to dramatically increase the role of the state in shaping the US economy. The end result has been a dramatic fall in economic freedom, sluggish growth, poor consumer confidence, high unemployment, a collapsing housing market, and an overall decline in US prosperity, with more than 45 million Americans now reliant on food stamps – that’s over one seventh of the entire country.

These are increasingly dangerous times, with American leadership being challenged across the globe. Only an historic reduction in government spending combined with pro-growth measures including lower business tax rates to stimulate job creation and attract investment can turn the US economy around. Unfortunately, as Standard and Poor’s decision has shown, this is a presidency in extreme denial over America’s towering debts, leading a nation on a precipice while blindfolded to reality. The United States badly needs another Reagan-style revolution to stave off further economic disaster, preserve American leadership on the world stage, and secure the future of a superpower. Ultimately, greater liberty and freedom, not the deathly hand of Big Government, are needed to turn this great nation around.

 

THANKS TO ALL THE DEMOCRATS THAT WILL NOT CUT SPENDING – WE WILL VOTE YOU OUT

By National Inflation Association

S&P just announced late this evening that they have downgraded the U.S. debt rating from AAA to AA+ with a negative outlook.

NIA is absolutely shocked by this. What shocks us is just how long it took them to make this downgrade. Just like how S&P and Moody’s didn’t downgrade subprime CDOs until the mortgage-backed bonds they held were practically worthless, S&P waited for U.S. debt obligations to reach five times GDP and for the U.S. dollar to lose 84% of its purchasing power over the course of a single decade. The U.S. was a hair away from defaulting on its debt this week if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, yet it still had a AAA rating.

NIA believes that a AAA rating should be reserved for countries that have budget surpluses, low levels of debt that could easily be paid off without printing money, and low levels of inflation. The U.S. had a cash budget deficit last year of $1.3 trillion, but once you include increases to unfunded liabilities, our real budget deficit was approximately $5 trillion. Even if Americans were taxed 100% of their income it wouldn’t be enough to balance the budget.

It is hard to imagine a fiscal situation worse than this, but the credit ratings agencies have justified giving the U.S. a AAA rating based on the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and the Federal Reserve’s ability to monetize our deficits and debts by printing money. If it wasn’t for our printing press and the world’s willingness to accept and hoard the dollars we print in return for the real products and commodities they produce, the U.S. credit rating would be junk.

S&P claims that their reason for downgrading the U.S. debt rating at this time is because, “the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge”. According to S&P, it is because our two political parties are so far apart that we weren’t able to pass a bill with anything but modest spending cuts. The reality is, the Republicans and Democrats aren’t far apart at all. Neither parties are serious about cutting spending and the underlying fundamentals of both their proposed bills were exactly the same. The Republicans that American tea party supporters elected to office have broken their promises to make major spending cuts and have accomplished absolutely nothing positive since entering office.

Our country just had an unbelievable opportunity to dramatically cut government spending in a last ditch effort to prevent hyperinflation. Instead, our government passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling that had no real spending cuts at all. The mainstream media tried to spin the bill into being a victory for U.S. tea party supporters due to the purported “spending cuts” that it contained. The truth is, government spending is set to rise every single year until the dollar is worthless. The $2.1 trillion in phony spending cuts are only tiny reductions to large spending increases and none of them will begin until early 2013 when we will need to once again raise the debt ceiling. Even if the government in early 2013 decides to follow through with them, rising interest payments on our national debt will mean substantially larger budget deficits than what are projected today.

Credit ratings agencies have absolutely zero credibility left and we believe that with hyperinflation coming soon, credit ratings will become a thing of the past. To capitalize on this, on May 23rd NIA suggested to you put options in the only publicly traded pure credit ratings play, Moody’s (MCO). On May 23rd with MCO trading for $37.90, NIA suggested to you MCO November 2011 $35 put options at $1.98. MCO today closed at $32.88 and our MCO put option suggestion finished the day with a last trade of $5.20 for a huge gain of 163% in a little over two months. NIA is very pleased that we figured out the #1 most profitable way to capitalize on the major fundamental shift that is taking place in this industry and as far as we are aware, NIA is the only organization in the world that suggested MCO puts in recent months.

 

With the stock market down big in recent weeks, NIA believes that this evening’s news is already mostly factored into stock prices. With the Fed Funds Rate having been left near zero for over two years, the world is flooded with excess liquidity of U.S. dollars and there is no chance of the stock market crashing like in late-2008/early-2009. In fact, the recent downward move in the stock market means the Federal Reserve is likely to soon implement additional monetary inflation measures and will leave the Fed Funds Rate near zero permanently.

The GDP was already on its way to becoming negative in the second half of 2011 and if the U.S. wants to avoid a debt default later this decade, it needs the Federal Reserve to print enough money to see at least 5% annual nominal GDP growth. It’s not just the Federal Government that needs GDP to grow, but most cities and states will default on their debts if GDP doesn’t grow rapidly. Cities and states don’t have printing presses so unless the U.S. government wants to bail them all out like the European Union is bailing out Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, it needs to create GDP growth even if that means the Federal Reserve eliminating interest payments on the $1.6 trillion in excess reserves held by banks and taxing banks who don’t lend the money.

NIA prays that Americans don’t make the mistake of buying U.S. Treasuries as a safe haven, as they are now the riskiest asset of all. If U.S. Treasuries rally next week, it will only be temporary and will be followed by the largest and sharpest reversal in history with a crash in Treasury prices and an explosion in yields like never seen before. Most Keynesian economists will likely forecast rising Treasury prices despite the U.S. debt crisis, because they claim the bond markets in other countries are tiny compared to ours and there simply is no other place to park safe haven money. In our opinion, there is no reason to own the fiat currency denominated bonds of any country or company. Gold and silver are the only true safe havens and it is our belief that by the end of this year, the U.S. public will begin investing into gold and silver in droves as they realize that although we avoided a debt default for now, a debt default by inflation is still on its way. The largest ever short-term rally in precious metals and mining stocks is ahead.

It is important to spread the word about NIA to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, if you want America to survive hyperinflation. Please tell everybody you know to become members of NIA for free immediately at: http://inflation.us

 

The Power of Bad Ideas

 

What we’ve got here is far worse than a failure to communicate.

  • By PEGGY NOONAN 

  • The Wall Street Journal     Aug 6, 2011

 

There was drama at the White House this week when a man tried to hurl himself over the fence. But the Secret Service intervened and talked the president into going back inside and finishing his term.

That’s from Conan O’Brien’s monologue the other night. It captures the moment pretty well. Mr. Obama’s poll numbers continue to fall, his position in the battleground states to deteriorate. From Politico: “Obama emerges from the months-long [debt ceiling] fracas weaker—and facing much deeper and more durable political obstacles—than his own advisers ever imagined.” The president seemed to admit as much when he met with supporters at a fund-raiser in Chicago. “When I said ‘Change we can believe in,’ I didn’t say, ‘Change we can believe in tomorrow.’ Not ‘Change we can believe in next week.’ We knew this was going to take time.” When presidents talk like that, they’re saying: This isn’t working.

One fact emerged rather starkly during the crisis, and it will likely have implications in the coming year. It is that the president misunderstands himself as a political figure. Specifically, he misunderstands his rhetorical powers. He thinks they are huge. They are not. They are limited.

His conviction led to an interesting historic moment, and certainly a dramatic one, during the debt ceiling negotiations.

***

It was late Wednesday afternoon, July 13, in the Cabinet Room in the White House. Budget negotiations between Democrats and Republicans had been going on for months. The president, the vice president and congressional leaders on both sides were meeting again. Late in the meeting, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor asked the president a question. As Mr. Cantor told it this week, he was thinking about how the White House and the Republicans were still far apart on the size of budget cuts. He felt the president and his party were hung up on an insistence on raising taxes. Mr. Cantor asked Mr. Obama if he would drop his stand that the debt ceiling should be raised without dollar-for-dollar cuts.At that point, said Mr. Cantor, the president “turned to me and said, ‘Eric, don’t call my bluff.’ He said, ‘I’m going to take this to the American people.’” Then he got up and left.

Chad Crowe

noonan0806

The president was confident he could go over the heads of the opposition and win the day with his powers of persuasion. On July 25 he made his move, with a prime-time national address.

Boy, did it not work.

It was a speech with a calm surface but a rough undertow. “The wealthiest Americans” and “biggest corporations” should “give up some of their breaks.” The “burden” must be “fairly shared.” The problem is Republicans, who are “insisting” on an approach that “doesn’t ask the wealthiest Americans or the biggest corporations to contribute anything at all.” These Republicans ask nothing of “those at the top of the income scale.” Their stand would “threaten working families” and enrich the “corporate jet owner,” the “oil companies” and “hedge fund managers.” But don’t worry, “the 98% of Americans who make under $250,000 would see no tax increases at all.” “Millionaires and billionaires” must “share in the sacrifice.” Otherwise the government may not be able to send out Social Security checks.

It was, obviously, an attempt at class warfare. But class warfare is inherently manipulative, and people often sense manipulation and lean away from it. Americans at this point—they’ve been through the 20th century—don’t like attempts to divide them. It turns things sour.

Beyond that, it was the kind of appeal Americans would only begin to consider if the person making it had a lot of personal trust built up in the credibility bank. People have to believe you’re genuine in your anxiety for your country, that you’re working in good faith with the other party, that you’re not using a crisis for political gain, that you genuinely mean well toward all, including even the wealthy, that you are shrewd and wise in your choice of a path. Mr. Obama doesn’t have that kind of trust. How many people think he’s broad-gauged, genuine, knowing, or that his judgment on political issues is superior?

So the big speech went nowhere. It moved the dial nowhere but down. The president’s poll numbers continued to fall. And soon the White House put up a white flag and dropped the insistence on tax increases, and Democrats and Republicans came up with a bill that finally passed both houses.

The July 25 speech was of a piece with most of the president’s rhetorical leadership through the debt ceiling crisis. Some of his statements were patronizing: We have to “eat our peas.” He was boring in the way that people who are essentially ideological are always boring. They bleed any realness out of their arguments. They are immersed in abstractions that get reduced to platitudes, and so they never seem to be telling it straight. And he was a joy-free zone. No matter how much the president tries to smile, and he has a lovely smile, one is always aware of his grim task: income equality, redistribution, taxes. Come, let us suffer together

***

But the president is supposed to be great at speeches. Why isn’t it working anymore? One answer is that it never “worked.” The power of the president’s oratory was always exaggerated. It is true that a good speech put him on the map in 2004 and made his rise possible, and true he gave some good speeches in 2008. But people didn’t really vote for him because he said did things like: “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” They voted for him in spite of that. They voted for him for other reasons.

The president has been obsessing on Ronald Reagan the past few months, referring to him in private and attempting to use him to buttress his position in public. They say Republicans can’t get over Reagan, but really it’s Democrats who aren’t over him, and who draw the wrong lessons from his success. Reagan himself never bragged about his ability to convince the American people. He’d never point a finger and say: “I’ll go to the people and grind you to dust.” He thought speaking was a big part of leadership, but only part, and in his farewell address he went out of his way to say he never thought of himself as a great communicator. He thought he simply communicated great things—essentially, the vision of the founders as applied to current circumstances.

Democrats were sure Reagan was wrong, so they explained his success to themselves by believing that it all came down to some kind of magical formula involving his inexplicably powerful speeches. They misdefined his powers and saddled themselves with an unrealistic faith in the power of speaking.

But speeches aren’t magic. A speech is only as good as the ideas it advances. Reagan had good ideas. Obama does not.

The debt ceiling crisis revealed Mr. Obama’s speeches as rhetorical kryptonite. It is the substance that repels the listener.

Obama’s Dirty Man Ray LaHood and Dirty Harry in the Senate shut down the FAA to preserve a Big Labor advantage.

You may be wondering what this week’s partial shutdown of the Fed-eral Aviation Administration is all about, given that it doesn’t have anything to do with the debt ceiling.
We wondered too, but mystery solved: Democrats have furloughed nearly 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 workers at air¬port construction projects to preserve a White House indulgence for Big Labor.

This episode is another lesson in Washing¬ton intrigue. The FAA Was last reauthorized in 2007, and it has since been strung along with 20 separate temporary funding mea¬sures. Senate Democrats and House Transpor¬tation Chairman John Mica, Republican of Florida, have been trying to negotiate a long-term agreement, but the talks stalemated this month. The major jams are over how much to subsidize flights to rural areas and a political favor the Obama Administration did two years ago for airline and railway unions.

Labor organizers in those industries used to have to persuade a majority of employees to form a union, a standard that had prevailed since 1934. But in 2010, the National Media¬tion Board that governs these elections sud-denly changed the rules. President Obama as¬sisted this change by appointing to the board the president of a pilot’s union and the former president of the Association of Flight Atten¬dants.

Now aviation and railway workers who don’t vote in a union election are no longer counted as part of the overall work force from which unions must build a majority. In effect, the board counts a nonexistent ballot as a pro-labor vote to organize.

The FAA bill the House passed earlier this year would have undone the mediation board’s about-face, but Democrats killed the provision in the Senate. In the conference committee negotiations, they’ve categorically rejected a return to the long-standing union status quo of only two years ago. Last week, the House passed another stopgap—the 21st— to prevent an FAA shutdown through September, with the labor imbroglio still unre¬solved.

Senate Democrats re¬jected it, out of nowhere. Os¬tensibly their reason was that it included a modest $16.6 million cut to something known as the Essential Air Service program, which underwrites flights to small airports. But the Senate had already passed $12.5 million of Mr. Mica’s cuts, which would end payments to airports within a 90-minute drive of a hub. The balance comes by capping per-ticket subsidies at $1,000—which would have discontinued the deals at such global destinations as Ely, Nevada, where every pas¬senger gets a taxpayer fillip of $3,720.

The real goal of Senate Democrats is to pre¬vent any kind of policy questions from enter¬ing any temporary FAA reauthorization. If Mr. Mica includes rural flights in this round and they yield, will union elections be next? This way, they can stall the negotiations forever, preserve the stacked union deck indefinitely and, maybe even better, blame the GOP for shutting down a government agency.

Someone wheeled out Transportation Sec¬retary Ray LaHood to the White House press room yesterday to strafe Congress—read: Re-publicans—for refusing to “compromise” and thus holding “hostage common, ordinary citi¬zens who want to work.” But his key, repeated demand was for “a clean bill,” which is really a demand to keep the union organizing advan¬tage on the books.

Mr. LaHood also invoked the plight of the 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construc¬tion workers. But someone should ask him why he and the White House are willing to let those workers hang while they do another fa¬vor for organized labor.
The Democrats and Big Labor are killing the USA.

George Soros Sets Up to Go Around The Law

George Soros had the Dodd-Frank bill written so he could go around it with his $25 billion family office.

George Soros planned for this day. The regulations have forced the swashbuckling hedge fund manager to return money to investors, shutter his hedge fund, and turn his fearsome investment operation into a mere “family office.” What’s the guy going to do for fun anymore?

Yesterday, Soros’ sons Robert and Jonathan sent a letter to outside investors ( which are a very small minority) in Soros Fund Management’s Quantum Group of Funds, citing the “unfortunate consequence of…new circumstances” as the reason behind the decision. The new circumstance, is the Soros designed Dodd-Frank Act, which would have required SFM to register with the SEC by March 2012. Despite the family’s massive wealth—Soros and kin are worth a reported $25 billion—this proved too burdensome a prospect, so they’re kicking out long-time investors in order to remain exempt from the new regulations.

In doing so, Soros joins two other downtrodden billionaires who recently threw in the towel instead of grappling with a bit of new paperwork: Stanley Druckenmiller and Carl Icahn. What a bunch of babies.

Of course, the usual suspects chimed in with the expected response to the news. What, you might ask, would the Wall Street Journal editorial page have to say on the matter? Oh, something along the lines of decrying the restrictiveness of all the new red tape that Washington decided to wrap Wall Street in after it nearly broke the world. And voila! Soros isn’t just an 81-year-old who needs a break; he’s a “victim” of his own Dodd-Frank.

The incessant drumbeat coming out of the whole free-market crowd is that Dodd-Frank went too far, that it’s strangling the lifeblood of market capitalism. Ask any banker and he’ll sell you the same sad story. New regulations aimed at curbing recklessness will instead trickle down and make the lives of us little people less meaningful and America a lesser place. How will we ever compete again? If hedge funds have to file paperwork with the government, this whole thing is going to hell in a hand-basket.

Here’s an alternative perspective: Dodd-Frank didn’t go far enough. It’s amazing how men of such wealth are so predisposed to reject any change in the way we govern ourselves that might just make the system a little safer. Ask any unemployed American whether he would accept a little more paperwork in exchange for an actual job and you know what they would say. Maybe not an unemployed member the Tea Party, mind you. How would that party continue if it didn’t have people so angry about losing their jobs that they’re not looking for jobs, and instead protesting the fact that people want to regulate George Soros? (If I hear one more person tell me that what made America great was the ability to do whatever one wants, even if that sends the globe into a terrifying recession, then I might just…join the Tea Party.)

Even if the bad rap that big government has gotten for itself is well deserved, it’s really quite amazing that there is anyone still out there trying to make the case that we don’t need a tighter hold on the risk-taking activities of big players in the financial markets. Likewise, it’s equally absurd to think that regulators now have no need to know what the Soros family is doing with their $25 billion just because they are turning themselves into a family office. I’d suggest that we don’t scale back Dodd-Frank, but expand it. Let’s regulate family offices too. If you’re big enough to have a “family office,” for God’s sake, you’re big enough to matter.

Anyone taking issue with that can just leave a message with my “family office,” otherwise known as my home. Poor Baby George. Such a small family office.

 

This Is No Time for Games

 

Ronald Reagan wouldn’t be playing ‘Targeted Catastrophe.’

By PEGGY NOONAN

The Wall Street Journal      July 15, 2011

 Looked at one way, it shouldn’t be hard. Both parties in Washington have every reason to want to prove they possess the baseline political competence to meet the government’s central and pending crisis, which is the spending crisis. Both parties should be eager to reach a debt ceiling agreement, if only to prove the system isn’t broken. Because really, they are the system. If it’s broken, they’re broken, and if they’re broken, who needs them?

Related Video

Peggy Noonan on the politics of the debt-limit debate.

So you’d think the hangman’s noose would have concentrated their minds. Instead, of course, it’s a battle. As this is written, the president seems to have the edge. But if he wins—whatever winning looks like—he’ll likely pay a price for his political victory. He usually does. He won on health care, which ruined his first two years in office and sharply accelerated the decline in his popularity.

***

The issues of spending and taxes should be decoupled. The spending crisis is what’s going on and demands attention now; it’s because of out-of-control spending that we are up against the debt ceiling. Taxes—whether to raise them on the wealthy, whether to reform the tax code and how—can’t be satisfyingly dealt with in the next few weeks. It is gameful of the White House to obscure the central crisis by focusing on a secondary one. The American people have very interesting thoughts and views on taxes, and in no way is it certain that this issue will always favor the Republicans. There’s an election in 2012, we can argue it through from now to then.

A central problem for Republicans is that they’re trying to do everything—cut spending, fight off tax increases, win national support—from the House. The House is probably not enough to win a fight like this. In the words of a conservative strategist, Republicans have one bullet and the Democrats have three: the presidency, the Senate, and a mainstream media generally willing to accept the idea that the president is the moderate in the fight.

Chad Crowe

 

noonan0716

The president is in the better position, and he knows it. Majority Leader Eric Cantor reports Mr. Obama went into enough-is-enough mode during White House talks this week, warned Mr. Cantor not to call his bluff, and ended the meeting saying: “Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting here?” I’m glad Reagan is his model for how presidents should comport themselves, but he should know Reagan never tried to scare people into doing things his way. Instead he tried to encourage support, and with a light touch. When locked in battle with a Democratic Congress he didn’t go on TV and make threats. He didn’t say, “Congress needs to know we must rebuild our defense system, and if they don’t, your children will die in a fiery hale of Soviet bullets.”

That was—how to put it?—not his style. It’s not any president’s style. But it’s what Mr. Obama was doing when he told CBS’s Scott Pelley that he isn’t sure there will be “money in the coffers” to send out Social Security checks. Soon he may be saying there won’t be money in the coffers to let students return to college or to pay servicemen. The president is playing Targeted Catastrophe. He’s attempting to agitate and frighten people into calling their congressmen and saying Don’t Cut Anything, Raise Taxes on Millionaires.

Three weeks of Targeted Catastrophe could be pretty effective. But if the president wins this way, there will be residual costs. He will have scared America and shook it up, all for a political victory. That will not add to affection or regard for the president. Centrists and independents, however they react in terms of support, will not think more highly of him.

Which gets me, briefly, to the latest poll on whether Americans think we’re on the right track or wrong track as a nation. The wrong-track number hit 63% this month, up from 60% last month, according to Reuters/Ipsos, which laid the increase to pessimism about the economy and “prolonged gridlock in Washington.”

Fair enough. But there’s more to be said about the nation the president seems to be busy agitating. It’s always assumed the right track/wrong track numbers are about the economy, which makes sense because economic facts are always in the forefronts of everyone’s minds. Will I get laid off, can I pay the bills, can my business survive?

But there are other reasons for American unease, and in a way some are deeper and more pervasive. Some are cultural. Here are only two. Pretty much everyone over 50 in America feels on some level like a refugee. That’s because they were born in one place—the old America—and live now in another. We’re like immigrants, whether we literally are or not. One of the reasons America has always celebrated immigrants is a natural, shared knowledge that they left behind everything they knew to enter a place that was different—different language, different ways and manners, different food and habits, different tempo. This took courage. They missed the old country. There’s a line in a Bernard Shaw play, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”: “I kept myself lonely for you!” That is the unspoken sentence of all immigrants toward their children—I made myself long for an old world so you could have a better one.

But everyone over 50 in America feels a certain cultural longing now. They hear the new culture out of the radio, the TV, the billboard, the movie, the talk show. It is so violent, so sexualized, so politicized, so rough. They miss the old America they were born into, 50 to 70 years ago. And they fear, deep down, that this new culture, the one their children live in, isn’t going to make it. Because it is, in essence, an assaultive culture, from the pop music coming out of the rental car radio to the TSA agent with her hands on your kids’ buttocks. We are increasingly strangers here, and we fear for the future. There are, by the way, 100 million Americans over 50. A third of the nation. That’s a lot of displaced people. They are part of the wrong-track numbers.

So is this. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because being a parent is hard, and not everyone has the ability or even the desire. But in the old America you knew it wasn’t so bad, because the culture could bring the kids up. Inadequate parents could sort of say, “Go outside and play in the culture,” and the culture—relatively innocent, and boring—could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Popular songs, the messages in movies—all of it was pretty hopeful, and, to use a corny old word, wholesome. Grown-ups now know you can’t send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed. And there isn’t less bad parenting now than there used to be. There may be more.

There is so much unease and yearning and sadness in America. So much good, too, so much energy and genius. But it isn’t a country anyone should be playing games with, and adding to the general sense of loss.

 

Obama Gives New Grant to ACORN, Violating Federal Law

Judicial Watch discovered that the Obama administration is flouting the will of Congress by giving federal taxpayer money to ACORN.

Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave a $79,819 grant to the largest branch of the ACORN tree, ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC). AHC filed papers last year legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). It’s the same old organization with a brand new ACORN-free name.

Worse yet, the grant funds a political agitation and indoctrination program. Here’s HUD’s euphemistic description of the program:
Education and Outreach Initiative grants (EOI) – HUD awarded $6.8 million to organizations that educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws. Groups will also conduct fair lending workshops, community meetings, and individual counseling activities focused on homeowners at risk for discrimination.
According to HUD, the grant money came out of fiscal 2010 appropriations. That’s a big problem.

As I reported previously, in 2009 Congress passed four separate appropriations bills that contained language blocking federal funds from flowing to ACORN during federal fiscal year 2010, which ran from Oct. 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2010. All four of the laws prevent ACORN and its affiliated groups from receiving federal taxpayer dollars.

The funding prohibition in Public Law 111-117 (PDF) applies specifically to HUD. It spells out in pretty clear terms that ACORN shouldn’t be getting any government funding. Let’s see just how clearly it spells it out:
Division A – Section 418. None of the funds made available under this Act or any prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations. [p. 80 of PDF]

Division B – Section 534. None of the funds made available under this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 125 of PDF]

Division E – Section 511. None of the funds made available in this division or any other division in this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 279 of PDF]
Yet despite the ban, President Obama, who worked for ACORN as an employee and as the group’s lawyer, found it in his heart to hand over $79,819 of your money to his thug friends at ACORN.

As I warn in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, ACORN is still with us, doing its best to destroy American capitalism and democracy.

The group is gearing up right now to make sure President Obama gets reelected in 2012. Its state chapters have adopted assumed names and remain active. Project Vote, ACORN’s vote manufacturing factory, continues to operate unmolested in ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

You’ve been warned.

Who in the congress is going to do something about this?

New World Order